Looking up into the sky we are looking back in time
- a lecture performance

Landmark, Bergen Kunsthall
18 May 2017 at 8 pm
Free entrance

On time, gravity, and dark matter; darkness, artificial light, and science fiction(s);
the sense that each sentence is a ray of light and that everything we are and everything on earth is (of) stardust.

Invited to give a small talk at the kick-off seminar for the municipality of Bergen's new cultural strategy for the arts (2018-2027).
The given theme was on the role of the artist in society. On responsibility, urgencies, and cultural policy.

Volt 2016
ISBN 978-82-303-2814-9
Pages: 240
Hardcover: 24 x 33 cm
Language: English
The book is available from Volt’s website and in selected book stores.

The Imaginary Reader is both an anthology of commissioned texts by a variety of writers, artists, critics, art historians and philosophers and an exhibition in the form of a book with several artworks. The final section of the book presents a series of texts about some of the art projects in the Volt programme Imagining Commons, which lasted twelve days in June in Bergen in 2015 with exhibitions, performances, a 24-hour camp, conversations and lectures. The book is meant as a stimulus to thinking about the imaginary and the relationship between fiction and reality. By way of artworks, experimental texts and reflections it offers a range of angles and ideas that it is up to the reader to take up and explore further. To imagine something is already to start a process; to acknowledge the limitations of a situation and at the same time to initiate a change. The Imaginary Reader explores different aspects of the imaginary – the political imagination, the imaginary in art and art production, imaginary projects, the lack of and the need for the imaginary.

The book is funded by Arts Council Norway, City of Bergen, Fritt ord and Public Art Norway (URO).

Contributing with an article on BIT Teatergarasjen, in the anthologyBevegelser - Norsk dansekunst i 20 år.
Ed. Sigrid Øverås Svendal.
The book is initiated by Danseinformasjonen and published by Skald forlag.

Seminar at the Olav H. Hauge Centre in Ulvik with a program of conversations, lectures, working sessions, readings, discussions, shared meals and a walk in the mountains.

Sign up: marie[at]v-o-l-t.no
Limited space available.

"I read and read and live in books and live off them, without them I’d go to pieces."
Olav H. Hauge "Dagbok Band I", 1927

The title of the seminar is taken from the title of a talk by Joan Didion. She had stolen it from the title of a text by George Orwell. She writes: "I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear."

The poet Olav H. Hauge (1908-1994) was born in Ulvik in Hardanger, on the farm Hakestad where he lived all his life. He worked as a farmer and gardener on his own orchard. He taught himself several languages, was internationally oriented and translated among others Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Friedrich Hölderlin, Paul Celan and Bertolt Brecht to Norwegian. He wrote poems, aphorisms and letters as well as an extensive nearly four thousand-page diary, "Dagbok 1924-1994", which was found and published posthumously. It contains reflections on work and life: the literature he read, on the often hard labour at the farm, the struggle with writing and finding time for it.

Bojana Kunst writes in her latest book "Artist at Work - Proximity of Art and Capitalism" (Zero Books, 2015) about the economic and social conditions of the artist's work. She writes about how the artists often do more and more for less and less and risk through it to corrode both their own practices and bodies. She writes about the significance of the artist to do less, when confronted with the demand to do more.

As a disobedient line of argument in the defence of art: ”Doing less could also be understood as a new radical gesture that opens up speculation about the value of artistic life and rather than working towards perfection of work, starts working autunomously for life itself. It is therefore an important aesthetic and ethical attitude for the artist as worker.”

BIOs:

Marcus Doverud is working as a dancer, choreographer and teacher. He graduated from the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts and studied aesthetics and philosophy at Södertörn University College. His work move between different stages dealing with bodily, spatial and sonic utterances and their interrelations. The performance "renaissance prenaissance" (2015) revolved around sampling and choreographic staging of music. He has made several solo performances in Sweden and has a longterm collaboration with among others artist Liv Strand which has resulted in a number of performances and book projects.

Joe Kelleher is Professor of Theatre and Performance at University of Roehampton, London. His books include "The Illuminated Theatre: Studies on the Suffering of Images" (Routledge 2015) and "Theatre & Politics" (Palgrave Macmillan 2009). He is co-author with Claudia and Romeo Castellucci, Chiara Giudi and Nicholas Ridout of "The Theatre of Societas Raffaello Sanzio" (Routledge 2007). Recent essays appear in "Stedelijk Studies" (2016), and "Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd: Ecology, the Environment and the Greening of the Modern Stage", ed. Carl Lavery and Clare Finburgh (2015). He has been making performances with Eirini Kartsaki, including most recently "How to Be a Fig" (2014).

Bojana Kunst is a philosopher, dramaturg and performance theoretician. She is a professor at the Institute for Applied Theater Studies in Justus Liebig University Giessen, where she is leading an international master program Choreography and Performance. She is a member of the editorial board of Maska Magazine, Amfiteater and Performance Research. Her essays have appeared in numerous journals and publications and she has thought and lectured extensively at the various universities in Europe. She published several publications, among them "Impossible Body" (Ljubljana, 1999) and "Dangerous Connections: Body, Philosophy and Relation to the Artificial" (Ljubljana, 2004), "Processes of Work and Collaboration in Contemporary Performance" (Ur)., Amfiteater, Maska, Ljubljana, 2006, "Performance and Labour", Performance Research 18.1. (ed. with Gabriele Klein), "Artist at Work", Zero Books, London, 2015.http://kunstbody.wordpress.com/

Danae Theodoridou is a Greek born performance maker and researcher based in Brussels. Her latest artistic work focuses on the notion of social imaginaries. In this frame she created "One Small Step for a Man: Hello, Goodbye" (2015), "Earth in 100 Years" (2016) and "Something Dreamy" (2016) which are currently presented in different European cities. She is a co-creator of the three-year-long research project "Dramaturgy at Work" and a co-author of the subsequent publication "The Practice of Dramaturgy - Working on Actions in Performance" (Valiz, 2016). She completed a practice-led PhD on dramaturgy at Roehampton University (London), teaches in various university departments and art conservatoires of theatre and dance, and publishes her texts internationally. http://www.danaetheodoridou.com/

The seminar is funded by Arts Council Norway and is in collaboration with the Olav H. Hauge Center.
Volt is funded by Arts Council Norway and City of Bergen.http://www.v-o-l-t.no/

The third edition of the art, research and commissioning project Dark Ecology will take place between 8 and 12 June 2016 in the border zone between Norway and Russia, with events scheduled in the Pasvik Valley and Kirkenes (NO) as well as in the surroundings of Nikel (RU). Over the course of five days, a group of more than 50 artists, researchers, curators, writers and organisers, will travel from Northern Norway to North West Russia. http://www.darkecology.net/journey-2016

Being in the jury together with Pelle Brage and Anne Marthe Dyvi for the Sørlandsutstillingen 2016.
It is opening on the 2nd of April in Skien and afterwards it will be touring to Mandal, Arendal and Flekkefjord. André Tribbensee got the travel grant 2016 from the jury.

Became a member of the board of the Norwegian Association of Curators. The Association works to enhance the understanding of curatorial practice in Norway and to promote the legal and economic conditions of its members vis-à-vis public policymakers and cultural institutions. http://norskkuratorforening.no

Notes on Utopia is a performance which builds a situation for reflecting on contemporary utopia, on public space and on utopian thoughts in art and life. Passing from climbing stairs, to looking at the ceiling or meeting the audience seated at a table, this performance approaches utopia through various modes of dealing with imaginary spaces and times.

Previous versions of the performance have been presented in Lisbon and Bergen. Gerner, Nerland and Soares have previously collaborated on the performances Endings for Berlin at Bekarei, Berlin (2006), Let’s do endings again at Lydgalleriet in Bergen (2007) and Endings for Oslo at Black Box Teater/UKS in Oslo (2007).

Alexander Gerner is a German playwright, theatre director and a researcher in Philosophy of Cognitive Sciences, based in Lisbon. He is a member of the Centre for Philosophy of Science at the University of Lisbon (CFCUL) and holds a PhD on ”Philosophical Investigations of Attention“ (2012). At the moment he is head of the CFCUL thematic research line ”Philosophy of Human Technologies” and a Post-Doc Researcher at the CFCUL on the topic of ”Philosophy of Cognitive Enhancement” with an FCT research grant. He investigates how technologies constitute, magnify, amplify human experiences, but can also enslave or put human experience and life at risk. He explores questions raised by human, cognitive, virtual and social ”enhancements” and critically envisions social or individual utopias (Bostrom, Kurzweil etc.) of human experience and their transformation that challenge policymakers and the public in general today or have to be prepared for in the near future. From 2015 onwards Gerner approaches the outreach of scientific and philosophical debates into public space on the (u-)topia of Human Enhancement in extended (artistic) ”peer reviews” such as by this new edition of the Notes on Utopia performance project. http://cognitiveenhancement.weebly.com/

Marie Nerland is an artist and curator based in Bergen, Norway. She holds a master in theatre studies from the University of Bergen and in creative curatorial practice from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design. She has been working with performance since 1999 in different collaborative projects. She was co-editor of the performing arts magazine 3t (1997-2007) and the Norwegian Art Yearbook (Pax Forlag, 2010-2013). In 2008, she founded Volt, a curatorial project for contemporary art based in Bergen. http://www.v-o-l-t.no

Lígia P. Soares is a Portuguese choreographer and playwright working in the field of performative arts. She started her work in 1997 with Companhia de Teatro Sensurround in Lisbon. Since 2001 she created more then 20 pieces a solo or in collaboration. Her work has been developed and presented both nationally and internationally. From 2004 to 2006 she was artist in residency at TanzFabrik in Berlin. She took part in several programs of contemporary dance and artistic residencies in Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Danceweb, PRACTICE (UferStudios), Fabrik Potsdam, Point-Éphémère, Centre National de la Danse, Alkantara, Nomad Lab Dance Academy, Guimarães 2012 among others. She is co-director of Máquina Agradável (Lisbon) since 2001 and co-mentor of the program “Demimonde” since 2011. http://www.maquinaagradavel.com

The presentation of the performance in Ljubljana, Maribor and Zagreb is funded by Arts Council Norway. Notes on Utopia was made with support from Bergen center for electronic art, Arts Council Norway and City of Bergen. Alexander Gerners (CFCUL) research is supported by a FCT grant SFRH/BPD/90360/2012.

Notes on Utopia is a performance which builds a situation for reflecting on contemporary utopia, on public space and on utopian thoughts in art and life. Passing from climbing stairs, to looking at the ceiling or meeting the audience seated at a table, this performance approaches utopia through various modes of dealing with imaginary spaces and times.

Previous versions of the performance have been presented in Lisbon and Bergen. Gerner, Nerland and Soares have previously collaborated on the performances Endings for Berlin at Bekarei, Berlin (2006), Let’s do endings again at Lydgalleriet in Bergen (2007) and Endings for Oslo at Black Box Teater/UKS in Oslo (2007).

Alexander Gerner is a German playwright, theatre director and a researcher in Philosophy of Cognitive Sciences, based in Lisbon. He is a member of the Centre for Philosophy of Science at the University of Lisbon (CFCUL) and holds a PhD on „Philosophical Investigations of Attention“ (2012). At the moment he is head of the CFCUL thematic research line ”Philosophy of Human Technologies” and a Post-Doc Researcher at the CFCUL on the topic of ”Philosophy of Cognitive Enhancement” with an FCT research grant. He investigates how technologies constitute, magnify, amplify human experiences, but can also enslave or put human experience and life at risk. He explores questions raised by human, cognitive, virtual and social ”enhancements” and critically envisions social or individual utopias (Bostrom, Kurzweil etc.) of human experience and their transformation that challenge policymakers and the public in general today or have to be prepared for in the near future. From 2015 onwards Gerner approaches the outreach of scientific and philosophical debates into public space on the (u-)topia of Human Enhancement in extended (artistic) ”peer reviews” such as by this new edition of the Notes on Utopia performance project. http://cognitiveenhancement.weebly.com/

Marie Nerland is an artist and curator based in Bergen, Norway. She holds a master in theatre studies from the University of Bergen and in creative curatorial practice from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design. She has been working with performance since 1999 in different collaborative projects. She was co-editor of the performing arts magazine 3t (1997-2007) and the Norwegian Art Yearbook (Pax Forlag, 2010-2013). In 2008, she founded Volt, a curatorial project for contemporary art based in Bergen. http://www.v-o-l-t.no

Lígia P. Soares is a Portuguese choreographer and playwright working in the field of performative arts. She started her work in 1997 with Companhia de Teatro Sensurround in Lisbon. Since 2001 she created more then 20 pieces a solo or in collaboration. Her work has been developed and presented both nationally and internationally. From 2004 to 2006 she was artist in residency at TanzFabrik in Berlin. She took part in several programs of contemporary dance and artistic residencies in Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Danceweb, PRACTICE (UferStudios), Fabrik Potsdam, Point-Éphémère, Centre National de la Danse, Alkantara, Nomad Lab Dance Academy, Guimarães 2012 among others. She is co-director of Máquina Agradável (Lisbon) since 2001 and co-mentor of the program “Demimonde” since 2011. http://www.maquinaagradavel.com

The presentation of the performance in Ljubljana, Maribor and Zagreb is funded by Arts Council Norway. Notes on Utopia was made with support from Bergen center for electronic art, Arts Council Norway and City of Bergen. Alexander Gerners (CFCUL) research is supported by a FCT grant SFRH/BPD/90360/2012.

Looking up into the sky we are looking back in time

2017 - InPerformances

Looking up into the sky we are looking back in time
- a lecture performance

Landmark, Bergen Kunsthall
18 May 2017 at 8 pm
Free entrance

On time, gravity, and dark matter; darkness, artificial light, and science fiction(s);
the sense that each sentence is a ray of light and that everything we are and everything on earth is (of) stardust.

Pro tempore! Sørlandsutstillingen 2017

Being in the jury for Sørlandsutstillingen 2017 together with Pelle Brage and Anne Marthe Dyvi.

Kristiansand Kunsthall
11.02. – 05.03.2017

Opening Saturday 11 February at 6 pm.
With Lasse Årikstads drawing club, performance by Ane Sagatun,
and a presentation by The parallel university.
Followed by an after-party at Teateret from 8.30 pm.

Pro tempore presents different contemporary artistic practices from the south coast region in Norway. In the centre of the exhibition is a long shared table, onto which several of the artworks are displayed. The table also functions as a meeting place, a place for workshops, collaboration, exchanges and cooperation. The exhibition presents several time-based works, including live radio, performance, film, video and sound installation, in addition to two ongoing projects throughout the exhibition period: The parallel university with a program of talks, lectures and discussions, and a drawing club which invites the public to come and draw together.

On the role of the artist in society

2017 - InLectures, Writing & more

Invited to give a small talk at the kick-off seminar for the municipality of Bergen's new cultural strategy for the arts (2018-2027).
The given theme was on the role of the artist in society. On responsibility, urgencies, and cultural policy.

Volt 2016
ISBN 978-82-303-2814-9
Pages: 240
Hardcover: 24 x 33 cm
Language: English
The book is available from Volt’s website and in selected book stores.

The Imaginary Reader is both an anthology of commissioned texts by a variety of writers, artists, critics, art historians and philosophers and an exhibition in the form of a book with several artworks. The final section of the book presents a series of texts about some of the art projects in the Volt programme Imagining Commons, which lasted twelve days in June in Bergen in 2015 with exhibitions, performances, a 24-hour camp, conversations and lectures. The book is meant as a stimulus to thinking about the imaginary and the relationship between fiction and reality. By way of artworks, experimental texts and reflections it offers a range of angles and ideas that it is up to the reader to take up and explore further. To imagine something is already to start a process; to acknowledge the limitations of a situation and at the same time to initiate a change. The Imaginary Reader explores different aspects of the imaginary – the political imagination, the imaginary in art and art production, imaginary projects, the lack of and the need for the imaginary.

The book is funded by Arts Council Norway, City of Bergen, Fritt ord and Public Art Norway (URO).

Article in an anthology on Norwegian dance

2016 - InLectures, Writing & more

Contributing with an article on BIT Teatergarasjen, in the anthologyBevegelser - Norsk dansekunst i 20 år.
Ed. Sigrid Øverås Svendal.
The book is initiated by Danseinformasjonen and published by Skald forlag.

Seminar at the Olav H. Hauge Centre in Ulvik with a program of conversations, lectures, working sessions, readings, discussions, shared meals and a walk in the mountains.

Sign up: marie[at]v-o-l-t.no
Limited space available.

"I read and read and live in books and live off them, without them I’d go to pieces."
Olav H. Hauge "Dagbok Band I", 1927

The title of the seminar is taken from the title of a talk by Joan Didion. She had stolen it from the title of a text by George Orwell. She writes: "I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear."

The poet Olav H. Hauge (1908-1994) was born in Ulvik in Hardanger, on the farm Hakestad where he lived all his life. He worked as a farmer and gardener on his own orchard. He taught himself several languages, was internationally oriented and translated among others Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Friedrich Hölderlin, Paul Celan and Bertolt Brecht to Norwegian. He wrote poems, aphorisms and letters as well as an extensive nearly four thousand-page diary, "Dagbok 1924-1994", which was found and published posthumously. It contains reflections on work and life: the literature he read, on the often hard labour at the farm, the struggle with writing and finding time for it.

Bojana Kunst writes in her latest book "Artist at Work - Proximity of Art and Capitalism" (Zero Books, 2015) about the economic and social conditions of the artist's work. She writes about how the artists often do more and more for less and less and risk through it to corrode both their own practices and bodies. She writes about the significance of the artist to do less, when confronted with the demand to do more.

As a disobedient line of argument in the defence of art: ”Doing less could also be understood as a new radical gesture that opens up speculation about the value of artistic life and rather than working towards perfection of work, starts working autunomously for life itself. It is therefore an important aesthetic and ethical attitude for the artist as worker.”

BIOs:

Marcus Doverud is working as a dancer, choreographer and teacher. He graduated from the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts and studied aesthetics and philosophy at Södertörn University College. His work move between different stages dealing with bodily, spatial and sonic utterances and their interrelations. The performance "renaissance prenaissance" (2015) revolved around sampling and choreographic staging of music. He has made several solo performances in Sweden and has a longterm collaboration with among others artist Liv Strand which has resulted in a number of performances and book projects.

Joe Kelleher is Professor of Theatre and Performance at University of Roehampton, London. His books include "The Illuminated Theatre: Studies on the Suffering of Images" (Routledge 2015) and "Theatre & Politics" (Palgrave Macmillan 2009). He is co-author with Claudia and Romeo Castellucci, Chiara Giudi and Nicholas Ridout of "The Theatre of Societas Raffaello Sanzio" (Routledge 2007). Recent essays appear in "Stedelijk Studies" (2016), and "Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd: Ecology, the Environment and the Greening of the Modern Stage", ed. Carl Lavery and Clare Finburgh (2015). He has been making performances with Eirini Kartsaki, including most recently "How to Be a Fig" (2014).

Bojana Kunst is a philosopher, dramaturg and performance theoretician. She is a professor at the Institute for Applied Theater Studies in Justus Liebig University Giessen, where she is leading an international master program Choreography and Performance. She is a member of the editorial board of Maska Magazine, Amfiteater and Performance Research. Her essays have appeared in numerous journals and publications and she has thought and lectured extensively at the various universities in Europe. She published several publications, among them "Impossible Body" (Ljubljana, 1999) and "Dangerous Connections: Body, Philosophy and Relation to the Artificial" (Ljubljana, 2004), "Processes of Work and Collaboration in Contemporary Performance" (Ur)., Amfiteater, Maska, Ljubljana, 2006, "Performance and Labour", Performance Research 18.1. (ed. with Gabriele Klein), "Artist at Work", Zero Books, London, 2015.http://kunstbody.wordpress.com/

Danae Theodoridou is a Greek born performance maker and researcher based in Brussels. Her latest artistic work focuses on the notion of social imaginaries. In this frame she created "One Small Step for a Man: Hello, Goodbye" (2015), "Earth in 100 Years" (2016) and "Something Dreamy" (2016) which are currently presented in different European cities. She is a co-creator of the three-year-long research project "Dramaturgy at Work" and a co-author of the subsequent publication "The Practice of Dramaturgy - Working on Actions in Performance" (Valiz, 2016). She completed a practice-led PhD on dramaturgy at Roehampton University (London), teaches in various university departments and art conservatoires of theatre and dance, and publishes her texts internationally. http://www.danaetheodoridou.com/

The seminar is funded by Arts Council Norway and is in collaboration with the Olav H. Hauge Center.
Volt is funded by Arts Council Norway and City of Bergen.http://www.v-o-l-t.no/

On art and money

The seminar was organized by the research group for subjectivation and late modernity at the departement of philosophy at the University of Bergen.

Dark Ecology Journey 2016

2016 - InLectures, Writing & more

The third edition of the art, research and commissioning project Dark Ecology will take place between 8 and 12 June 2016 in the border zone between Norway and Russia, with events scheduled in the Pasvik Valley and Kirkenes (NO) as well as in the surroundings of Nikel (RU). Over the course of five days, a group of more than 50 artists, researchers, curators, writers and organisers, will travel from Northern Norway to North West Russia. http://www.darkecology.net/journey-2016

Sørlandsutstillingen 2016

2016 - InLectures, Writing & more

Being in the jury together with Pelle Brage and Anne Marthe Dyvi for the Sørlandsutstillingen 2016.
It is opening on the 2nd of April in Skien and afterwards it will be touring to Mandal, Arendal and Flekkefjord. André Tribbensee got the travel grant 2016 from the jury.

Interview in Billedkunst

2016 - InLectures, Writing & more

Board member Norwegian Association of Curators

2016 - InLectures, Writing & more

Became a member of the board of the Norwegian Association of Curators. The Association works to enhance the understanding of curatorial practice in Norway and to promote the legal and economic conditions of its members vis-à-vis public policymakers and cultural institutions. http://norskkuratorforening.no

Notes on Utopia, Zagreb

Notes on Utopia is a performance which builds a situation for reflecting on contemporary utopia, on public space and on utopian thoughts in art and life. Passing from climbing stairs, to looking at the ceiling or meeting the audience seated at a table, this performance approaches utopia through various modes of dealing with imaginary spaces and times.

Previous versions of the performance have been presented in Lisbon and Bergen. Gerner, Nerland and Soares have previously collaborated on the performances Endings for Berlin at Bekarei, Berlin (2006), Let’s do endings again at Lydgalleriet in Bergen (2007) and Endings for Oslo at Black Box Teater/UKS in Oslo (2007).

Alexander Gerner is a German playwright, theatre director and a researcher in Philosophy of Cognitive Sciences, based in Lisbon. He is a member of the Centre for Philosophy of Science at the University of Lisbon (CFCUL) and holds a PhD on ”Philosophical Investigations of Attention“ (2012). At the moment he is head of the CFCUL thematic research line ”Philosophy of Human Technologies” and a Post-Doc Researcher at the CFCUL on the topic of ”Philosophy of Cognitive Enhancement” with an FCT research grant. He investigates how technologies constitute, magnify, amplify human experiences, but can also enslave or put human experience and life at risk. He explores questions raised by human, cognitive, virtual and social ”enhancements” and critically envisions social or individual utopias (Bostrom, Kurzweil etc.) of human experience and their transformation that challenge policymakers and the public in general today or have to be prepared for in the near future. From 2015 onwards Gerner approaches the outreach of scientific and philosophical debates into public space on the (u-)topia of Human Enhancement in extended (artistic) ”peer reviews” such as by this new edition of the Notes on Utopia performance project. http://cognitiveenhancement.weebly.com/

Marie Nerland is an artist and curator based in Bergen, Norway. She holds a master in theatre studies from the University of Bergen and in creative curatorial practice from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design. She has been working with performance since 1999 in different collaborative projects. She was co-editor of the performing arts magazine 3t (1997-2007) and the Norwegian Art Yearbook (Pax Forlag, 2010-2013). In 2008, she founded Volt, a curatorial project for contemporary art based in Bergen. http://www.v-o-l-t.no

Lígia P. Soares is a Portuguese choreographer and playwright working in the field of performative arts. She started her work in 1997 with Companhia de Teatro Sensurround in Lisbon. Since 2001 she created more then 20 pieces a solo or in collaboration. Her work has been developed and presented both nationally and internationally. From 2004 to 2006 she was artist in residency at TanzFabrik in Berlin. She took part in several programs of contemporary dance and artistic residencies in Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Danceweb, PRACTICE (UferStudios), Fabrik Potsdam, Point-Éphémère, Centre National de la Danse, Alkantara, Nomad Lab Dance Academy, Guimarães 2012 among others. She is co-director of Máquina Agradável (Lisbon) since 2001 and co-mentor of the program “Demimonde” since 2011. http://www.maquinaagradavel.com

The presentation of the performance in Ljubljana, Maribor and Zagreb is funded by Arts Council Norway. Notes on Utopia was made with support from Bergen center for electronic art, Arts Council Norway and City of Bergen. Alexander Gerners (CFCUL) research is supported by a FCT grant SFRH/BPD/90360/2012.

Notes on Utopia, Maribor

2015 - InPerformances

Notes on Utopia

Alexander Gerner, Marie Nerland, Ligia Soares

4 September 2015
Tkalka

Performa & Platforma
Maribor

Notes on Utopia is a performance which builds a situation for reflecting on contemporary utopia, on public space and on utopian thoughts in art and life. Passing from climbing stairs, to looking at the ceiling or meeting the audience seated at a table, this performance approaches utopia through various modes of dealing with imaginary spaces and times.

Previous versions of the performance have been presented in Lisbon and Bergen. Gerner, Nerland and Soares have previously collaborated on the performances Endings for Berlin at Bekarei, Berlin (2006), Let’s do endings again at Lydgalleriet in Bergen (2007) and Endings for Oslo at Black Box Teater/UKS in Oslo (2007).

Alexander Gerner is a German playwright, theatre director and a researcher in Philosophy of Cognitive Sciences, based in Lisbon. He is a member of the Centre for Philosophy of Science at the University of Lisbon (CFCUL) and holds a PhD on „Philosophical Investigations of Attention“ (2012). At the moment he is head of the CFCUL thematic research line ”Philosophy of Human Technologies” and a Post-Doc Researcher at the CFCUL on the topic of ”Philosophy of Cognitive Enhancement” with an FCT research grant. He investigates how technologies constitute, magnify, amplify human experiences, but can also enslave or put human experience and life at risk. He explores questions raised by human, cognitive, virtual and social ”enhancements” and critically envisions social or individual utopias (Bostrom, Kurzweil etc.) of human experience and their transformation that challenge policymakers and the public in general today or have to be prepared for in the near future. From 2015 onwards Gerner approaches the outreach of scientific and philosophical debates into public space on the (u-)topia of Human Enhancement in extended (artistic) ”peer reviews” such as by this new edition of the Notes on Utopia performance project. http://cognitiveenhancement.weebly.com/

Marie Nerland is an artist and curator based in Bergen, Norway. She holds a master in theatre studies from the University of Bergen and in creative curatorial practice from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design. She has been working with performance since 1999 in different collaborative projects. She was co-editor of the performing arts magazine 3t (1997-2007) and the Norwegian Art Yearbook (Pax Forlag, 2010-2013). In 2008, she founded Volt, a curatorial project for contemporary art based in Bergen. http://www.v-o-l-t.no

Lígia P. Soares is a Portuguese choreographer and playwright working in the field of performative arts. She started her work in 1997 with Companhia de Teatro Sensurround in Lisbon. Since 2001 she created more then 20 pieces a solo or in collaboration. Her work has been developed and presented both nationally and internationally. From 2004 to 2006 she was artist in residency at TanzFabrik in Berlin. She took part in several programs of contemporary dance and artistic residencies in Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Danceweb, PRACTICE (UferStudios), Fabrik Potsdam, Point-Éphémère, Centre National de la Danse, Alkantara, Nomad Lab Dance Academy, Guimarães 2012 among others. She is co-director of Máquina Agradável (Lisbon) since 2001 and co-mentor of the program “Demimonde” since 2011. http://www.maquinaagradavel.com

The presentation of the performance in Ljubljana, Maribor and Zagreb is funded by Arts Council Norway. Notes on Utopia was made with support from Bergen center for electronic art, Arts Council Norway and City of Bergen. Alexander Gerners (CFCUL) research is supported by a FCT grant SFRH/BPD/90360/2012.

Notes on Utopia, Ljubljana

2015 - InPerformances

Notes on Utopia

Alexander Gerner, Marie Nerland, Ligia Soares

6 September 2015
Kino Šiška
Ljubljana

Notes on Utopia is a performance which builds a situation for reflecting on contemporary utopia, on public space and on utopian thoughts in art and life. Passing from climbing stairs, to looking at the ceiling or meeting the audience seated at a table, this performance approaches utopia through various modes of dealing with imaginary spaces and times.

Previous versions of the performance have been presented in Lisbon and Bergen. Gerner, Nerland and Soares have previously collaborated on the performances Endings for Berlin at Bekarei, Berlin (2006), Let’s do endings again at Lydgalleriet in Bergen (2007) and Endings for Oslo at Black Box Teater/UKS in Oslo (2007).

Alexander Gerner is a German playwright, theatre director and a researcher in Philosophy of Cognitive Sciences, based in Lisbon. He is a member of the Centre for Philosophy of Science at the University of Lisbon (CFCUL) and holds a PhD on „Philosophical Investigations of Attention“ (2012). At the moment he is head of the CFCUL thematic research line ”Philosophy of Human Technologies” and a Post-Doc Researcher at the CFCUL on the topic of ”Philosophy of Cognitive Enhancement” with an FCT research grant. He investigates how technologies constitute, magnify, amplify human experiences, but can also enslave or put human experience and life at risk. He explores questions raised by human, cognitive, virtual and social ”enhancements” and critically envisions social or individual utopias (Bostrom, Kurzweil etc.) of human experience and their transformation that challenge policymakers and the public in general today or have to be prepared for in the near future. From 2015 onwards Gerner approaches the outreach of scientific and philosophical debates into public space on the (u-)topia of Human Enhancement in extended (artistic) ”peer reviews” such as by this new edition of the Notes on Utopia performance project. http://cognitiveenhancement.weebly.com

Marie Nerland is an artist and curator based in Bergen, Norway. She holds a master in theatre studies from the University of Bergen and in creative curatorial practice from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design. She has been working with performance since 1999 in different collaborative projects. She was co-editor of the performing arts magazine 3t (1997-2007) and the Norwegian Art Yearbook (Pax Forlag, 2010-2014). In 2008, she founded Volt, a curatorial project for contemporary art based in Bergen. http://www.v-o-l-t.no

Lígia P. Soares is a Portuguese choreographer and playwright working in the field of performative arts. She started her work in 1997 with Companhia de Teatro Sensurround in Lisbon. Since 2001 she created more then 20 pieces a solo or in collaboration. Her work has been developed and presented both nationally and internationally. From 2004 to 2006 she was artist in residency at TanzFabrik in Berlin. She took part in several programs of contemporary dance and artistic residencies in Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Danceweb, PRACTICE (UferStudios), Fabrik Potsdam, Point-Éphémère, Centre National de la Danse, Alkantara, Nomad Lab Dance Academy, Guimarães 2012 among others. She is co-director of Máquina Agradável (Lisbon) since 2001 and co-mentor of the program “Demimonde” since 2011. http://www.maquinaagradavel.com

The presentation of the performance in Ljubljana, Maribor and Zagreb is funded by Arts Council Norway. Notes on Utopia was made with support from Bergen center for electronic art, Arts Council Norway and City of Bergen. Alexander Gerners (CFCUL) research is supported by a FCT grant SFRH/BPD/90360/2012.

Residency in Vilnius

2015 - InLectures, Writing & more

Residency at the Art Printing House in Vilnius
14th - 30th of September 2015 with Øyvind Ådland and Arve Kleiva. The residency is funded from the City of Bergen.http://www.menuspaustuve.lt
Photo: Arts Printing House, Dmitrij Matvejev

Citadelløya

2015 - InLectures, Writing & more

Spending one week in August at the NBK's (Norwegian Visual Artists Association) house at the beautiful Citadell Island outside of Stavern at the south coast of Norway. The house has been used by artists every summer since 1910.

Montreal

2015 - InLectures, Writing & more

Visiting Montreal in July 2015 for studio visists, exhibitions and meetings.

Daughters of Chaos Deleuze Studies Camp 2015

2015 - InLectures, Writing & more

Taking part in the 8th Deleuze Studies Camp in the Stockholm archipelago on the island of Utö,
22nd – 26th June 2015. http://daughtersofchaos.net

Mobility grant: Stockholm

2015 - InLectures, Writing & more

10 days in Stockholm for curatorial research and taking part in the 8th Deleuze Studies International Conference: Daughters of Chaos: Practice, Discipline, A Life at Konstfack. With a grant from the Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme from Nordic Culture Point.

Over a period of 24 hours and on the location of a former factory, BADco. intends to stage the problems of relations between production, labour, watching and resting together with a group of invited artists and spectators. The situation and the space are a transformation of the set of the very first film ever made, Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in Lyon (1895), into a performing space, but also a social, cultural and discussion centre, camp, dormitory, etc. This will create a space for a discussion of the topics of work, watching and the attention economy; of productivity in the arts, the ethics of work, the disappearance of production in favour of presentation, and the valorization of the arts by way of non-aesthetic spheres of social production. The camp is the first in the series of events that will conclude BADco.’s ten years of research on the parallel history of film, work and performance.

BIOs:

BADco. is a collaborative performance collective based in Zagreb, Croatia. The artistic core of the collective consists of Ivana Ivkovic, Ana Kreitmeyer, Tomislav Medak, Goran Sergej Pristaš, Nikolina Pristaš, Lovro Rumiha and Zrinka Užbinec. Since its beginning (2000) this combination of three choreographers/dancers, two dramaturges and one philosopher, plus the company production manager, has systematically focused on researching protocols of performing, presenting and observing by structuring its pro-jects around diverse formal and perceptual relations and contexts. BADco.’s working process is reflected in their performances, which are strongly interdisciplinary and take place at the intersection of theatre, performance, installation and architecture. Over the years BADco. has produced more than twenty evening-long stage performances as well as publications and seminars on the topic of performance. Recent projects include the performance The Drawer (2015); the publication Time and (In)Completion – Images and performances of time in late capitalism (2014); the performative installation Broken Performances (2013), Gallery Nova, Zagreb; TVolution will not be televised (2013), Skogen, Gothenburg; Responsibility for Things Seen: Tales in Negative Space, the Croatian exhibition at the 54th Venice Biennale, curated by the curators’ collective What, How & for Whom/WHW (2011). badco.hr

Espen Sommer Eide is a musician and artist from Tromsø. With the musical projects Alog and Phonophani he has been among the most prominent representatives of experimental electronic music from Norway, with a string of releases on the label Rune Grammofon. He has also produced a series of site-specific pieces and artworks. These projects include a multichannel composition for the 50th anniversary of the completion of the chapel of Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, France; and a special ‘Building Instruments’ performance at the 2008 Manifesta Biennial. He recently had a solo exhibition, Dead Language Poetry, at Bergen Kunsthall/No.5 2013, and performed The Weed Archive at the 2013 Performa Festival in New York. Eide is also a member of the theatre/art collective Verdensteatret, with extensive international touring and exhibitions. Eide has been involved in a series of art and archival projects associated with topics relating to the Barents and Arctic regions of Northern Norway. sommer.alog.net

Ingri Midgard Fiksdal is a choreographer and performer. She is currently a research fellow at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (the Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowship Program). Fiksdal’s work deals with perception and affectivity, and several of her pieces take shape as part performance and part live concert. The audience is always integral to the work, which aims to produce temporary collectives between performers and spectators. The notion of collectivity here refers to modes of attention and sensorial transference, rather than to interactivity. Her recent productions Hoods (2014), Night Tripper (2012) and The Orchard Ballads (2011) all created together with the artists Signe Becker and Ingvild Langgård, have been touring to venues such as brut Künstlerhaus in Vienna, Kampnagel in Hamburg, Inkonst in Malmö, The Armory Show in New York City, the LIMIT festival in Belgrade, as well as several venues around Norway. Hoods won the Norwegian Dance Critics’ Award from the Norwegian Critics’ Association in 2014. ingrifiksdal.com

Signe Lidénis an artist based in Bergen. Her installations and performances examine man-made landscapes and their resonance. She is interested in how places and their histories resonate; in memory, through narratives and various materials, as ideological manifestations and political territories. Her work ranges from sound installations, sculpture, video and performance to more documentary forms such as sound essays and archives. Lidén made the sound and video work krysning/conflux for the Dark Ecology project (2014); the installation series Writings for the European Sound Art Network Resonance (2013-14); and collaborated with Steve Rowell and Annesofie Norn on The Cold Coast Archive (2010-12), an exhibition series on the Global Seed Vault launched at the Centre for PostNatural History, Pittsburgh. She was commissioned to make works for Hordaland Art Center, Kunsthall Oslo and Ny Musikk, Touch Radio, and Interferenze New Arts Festival. signeliden.com

Grafters’ Quarterly is a free, English-language newspaper based in Bergen. The four issues each year present both new commissioned contributions and reprints from numerous fields within a topic specific to each issue. The first three issues of the newspaper were titled “Improvising Logics”, “Indexing Abstraction”, and “Social Thing Person”. The fourth issue will be launched in the summer of 2015 and takes its starting point in ideas relating to work ethics. Grafters’ Quarterly was founded and is edited by the artists Tora Endestad Bjørkheim and Johnny Herbert. The name of the newspaper alludes to ‘grafting’, denoting writing, the merging of one plant with another to facilitate continued growth, as well as a more colloquial expression for working. graftersquarterly.com

The project is funded by the City of Bergen and with travel support from Republic of Croatia, Ministry of Culture. It is part of Imagining Commons – twelve days of exhibitions, performances, talks, discussions and lectures 5th – 17th June 2015 in Bergen.
Imagining Commons is funded by Arts Council Norway, City of Bergen, Fritt Ord and Public Art Norway (URO).

On Board MANIFESTA 10

2014 - InLectures, Writing & more

MANIFESTA 10 On Board
7 - 11 October 2014

MANIFESTA 10 On Board brings together three hundred artists, students, and arts professionals from the Nordic and Baltic region and Russia on an overnight ferry trip from Helsinki to St. Petersburg. The program addresses the context in which MANIFESTA 10 is presented and the issues related to its presence in Russia. On board participants will examine Russia’s socio-cultural and political impact on MANIFESTA 10 through discussion on the topic of censorship/self-censorship. What does censorship mean in this region? What is its impact on the work of artists and arts organizations? The program begins on board the St. Peter Line ferry in Helsinki and is followed by an optional program of events in St. Petersburg.

An exciting mix of leading Russian and international artists, theorists, and curators are participating in the On Board panel discussions and will present performances, critical discussions, video screenings, and interactive workshops during the overnight boat trip. The program will kick-off with introductory remarks from MANIFESTA 10 Curator Kasper König and Manifesta Director Hedwig Fijen; and a keynote address from Moscow professor Madina Tlostanova about the arts in Russia today and her research on the decolonization of post-Soviet countries and cultural politics in relationship to MANIFESTA 10’s current presence in Russia.

Manifesta 10 On Board has been produced by Manifesta in collaboration with Frame Visual Art Finland, Centre for Contemporary Arts Estonia and OCA Office for Contemporary Art Norway. Supported by the Nordic Culture Fund.

Within this symposium and its accompanying artistic programme we intend to problematize the shifting grounds of institutional evaluation and valorization in the art. Selection procedures such as curatorial concepts, institutional programmation, criticism, theory, funding priorities, project assessment, interpersonal connections, political clout and so on affect what is included and what remains outside the art system, but also how artworks engage with the broader socio-economic context. They define the types of work that are produced and that are not, the types of of work that are presented and that are not. In turn they re-configure subjectivities involved in the process of artistic production — i.e. roles and self-understanding of artists, curators, spectators, audiences, funders, etc.
However, the works that fall outside, escape and subvert these quantitative and qualitative boundaries of assessment, sometimes succeed in re-configuring the filtering mechanisms of valorization and sediment in the institutional knowledge that is applied toward future valorization. This is artistic ‘dead labor’ sedimenting in the circuitry of institutions. And while this dialectical process has been a constant topos of institutional critique, we want to focus on contemporary and ascendant forms of valorization and subjective determinations that they reproduce – for instance: project, practice, didactism, realism, etc. – and look at the works that try to undercut their centripetal force.

aiPotu is a collaboration between the artists Anders Kjellesvik and Andreas Siqueland. They met at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen in 2004 and have since worked together on travel-related projects. aiPotu began their collaboration with the purchase of an old mobile home. The vehicle served as the artists’ home, means of transport and exhibition space on a series of expeditions from 2004–2007. The first journey was Tour of Europe in which the figure of a number eight drawn on the European map served as their itinerary. Underway aiPotu made interventions in the public space, often in collaboration with local institutions. This was followed up with Nordic Tour. The work done was often social and sculptural nature. An example is Hotel in which the camper van was converted into a functioning hotel outside Bergen Kunsthall. Many of these early works were closely tied to the concept of an island: a closed, isolated and independent environment. In 2007 aiPotu decided to visit and connect different island communities by going on an Island Tour. The project began with a tour of Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Some of aiPotu´s recent exhibitions and projects include Five Thousand Generations of Birds, Fitjar, Norway, Museo d’Arte Orientale, Torino, Italy, Boomerang Boat Museum, South Shields, England; Hordaland kunstsenter, Bergen, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; 16th Biennale of Sydney – Revolutions Forms That Turn; Tentshow, Kunsthallen Nikolaj in Copenhagen, Bergen Kunsthall; Volt, Bergen and Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo. aipotu.org

Kristien Van den Brande is a writer, performer, dramaturge and editor in the field of performing arts. Many of the projects she is involved in explore the relation between speech and writing, transcribing and (re)embodying spoken or written word. Since 2008 she has been a member of Sarma, a Brussels-based artistic-discursive laboratory where she collaborates with Myriam Van Imschoot on notions and practices of embodied knowledge, oral transmission, interview archives and expanded publishing. She was a dramaturge for Christine De Smedt’s solo Untitled 4 (2011), a series of performative portraits of affiliated choreographers, based on re-incorporated interviews. This year she worked with Sarah Vanhee on Lecture For Every One, and in 2012 on Untitled (Leuven) and Untitled (Gent), a project that takes place in the houses of people who in their own language speak about the art objects they hold and how they relate to art outside the domestic environment. As a performer she takes part in Mette Edvardsen’s ongoing Time Has Fallen Asleep in the Afternoon Sunshine, learning books by heart and reading them from memory. In 2005 she was a researcher at the Jan Van Eyck Academy, working on a collective research project initiated by Wim Cuyvers, about public space in Kinshasa-Brazzaville. It resulted in the book Brakin. Visualizing the Visible. Kristien Van den Brande has a MA in Pedagogical Philosophy and Theater Studies.

Mette Edvardsen
The work of Mette Edvardsen is situated within the performing arts field, but also explores other media and formats such as video and books. She has worked for several years as a dancer and performer for Les Ballets C. de la B. with Hans Van den Broeck (1996–2000) and Christine de Smedt (2000–2005), and danced in pieces by Thomas Hauert/ ZOO, Bock/ Vincenzi, Mårten Spångberg, Lynda Gaudreau, deepblue, and others. She created and produced two pieces in collaboration with Lilia Mestre, and made the project Sauna in Exile in collaboration with Heine R. Avdal, Liv Hanne Haugen and Lawrence Malstaf in 2002/2004. She choreographed and performed a version of Thomas Lehmen’s Schreibstück together with Christine de Smedt and Mårten Spångberg in 2004. Her own work includes the pieces Private collection (2002), Time will show (detail) (2004), Opening (2005/ 2006), The way/ you move (installation, 2006), or else nobody will know (2007), every now and then (2009), Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine (2010), Black (2011), and the video works Stills (2002), coffee (2006), cigarette (2008) and Faits divers (2008). She presents her works internationally and continues to develop projects with other artists as both a collaborator and as a performer. metteedvardsen.be

Myriam Van Imschoot is a Brussels-based writer and performance artist who works with sound and interview archives with an interest in the performative nature of documents and the construction of alternative historiographies. Fascinated by phenomena of long distance communication, she embarked on a cycle of works that deal with yodeling, crying and waving. Dealing with the question of proximity and distance, absence and resonance, she pursues her interest in the way humans attempt to bridge the gaps. Her work crosses disciplines such as sound installation, performance and video. It has been supported and presented by Kaaitheater, Kunstencentrum Buda, Vooruit, Jan van Eyck Academie, Recyclart, MUU Galerie, Binaural Nodar Sound Arts Centre, Campo, Kran Film Collective, Suburban Video Lounge, Sculpture International Rotterdam and Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie.myriamvanimschoot.wordpress.com

Katla is the collaborative venture of Mathijs van Geest, Jonas Ib F. H. Jensen and Ånond Versto. Established in 2010, Katla has evolved into an eclectic institution lavished with nomadic, bureaucratic and corporate tendencies. Under the flag of the organization, the crew explores oceans and terrains. Voyages are set to investigate and formulate new myth and systems of ideas. Recent exhibitions and events took place at Kristiansand Kunsthall, Sound of Mu, Tag Team Studio in Bergen and and on the ocean with the boat Calypso.talkapokalyps.com

Mala Kline is a performer, choreographer, researcher and writer. She has a BA in philosophy and comparative literature (UL, Ljubljana) and MA in theatre (DasArts, Amsterdam). Her own writing is embedded in the technology of dreaming – a creative and performative practice based on the affective and transformative performance of image. She founded EMANAT – Institute for the Affirmation and Development of Dance and Contemporary Art in Slovenia, SOI Slovenia for the dissemination of dream and imagery work throughout the EU, and recently DREAMLAB – a mobile laboratory for research and development of imagery and dream work in relation to performing art practices. She currently studies at the School of Images (NYC) and is writing a PhD on ethics in performing arts at the Department of Philosophy (UL, Ljubljana) and within the framework of a.pass (a post-master’s programme for performing arts in Brussels). She has received major awards in the field of contemporary dance in Slovenia: the Golden Bird Award (Zlata ptica), the Triton Award (Povodni Moz) and most recently the Award of Ksenja Hribar for choreography. malakline.com

Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens
In their collaborative practice, Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens heighten the allusive and deconstructive features of language in order to interrogate knowledge formations, institutional contexts, and social and political entanglements. Their work is characterized by a minimalist approach to the form and construction of the art object and a use of materials as a way to make ideas visible.
From 2008 to 2010 they developed an umbrella project entitled Horse and Sparrowthat is concerned with the production of visual and semantic devices that articulate a reticence towards the models, systems, and narratives put forth by economists. Other works, such as Supply and Demand for Immortality, a double-wall mural produced for the 10th Sharjah Biennial in 2011 examine how desire and belief influence economic discourse and practices but also carry the potential to incite new forms of economy. Their more recent projects examine the question of labour subjugated to the politics of growth and possible forms of resistance to this subjugation. Their works have been exhibited at the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo; Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA), Glasgow; Sharjah Biennial 10, UAE; Ausland, Berlin; Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver; Owens Art Gallery, Sackville; Western Front, Vancouver; Trafó, House of Contemporary Arts, Budapest, and the European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück. Recent solo exhibitions include I’d gladly surrender myself to you, body and soul, G Gallery, Toronto (2012); Real failure needs no excuse, Monte Vista Projects, Los Angeles (2012) and The Space of Observation, 221A, Vancouver (2011). Their artistic projects and writings have been published in Le Merle, C-magazine, New Social Inquiry, and Pyramid Power. ibghylemmens.com

Andrew Taggart and Chloe Lewis are a Canadian artist duo based in Norway, where they received a joint MFA in 2010 from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design. Focusing primarily on the relationship between place and form, their work typically manifests as sculptural collections, artist books, and site-based interventions. They have most recently exhibited at Small Projects, Tromsø; NoPlace, Oslo; and the Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw. In parallel to their studio practice, Lewis & Taggart operate the Museum of Longing and Failure, a small museum with an emphasis on sculptural practices.lewisandtaggart.com

The symposium is supported by Fritt Ord and Arts Council Norway.v-o-l-t.no

Debate on the cultural policy after the change of government with State Secretary to the Minister of Culture, Knut Olav Åmås, artistic director at Ny musikk Anne Hilde Neset and former editor of kunstkritikk.no Jonas Ekeberg.
Moderator: Kåre Bulie.

CHROMA I - IV

2013 - InCuratorial Work

The CHROMA project is inspired by British artist, writer and filmmaker Derek Jarman’s book ”Chroma – a book of Colour” (1993). Jarman worked and experimented with a range of different media including film, photography, writing, the diary format, collages and gardening. ”Chroma” consists of a mix of observations, quotations and meditations on life and colour. It contains of 19 essays on the primary colours as well as white, black, grey, silver, gold, shadow, light and translucence.

Azar Alsharif is a visual artist, who graduated with a BA in Fine Art from the Art Academy at Bergen National Academy of the Arts in 2011. She works primarily with collage, installation and sculpture, drawing on a range of materials and techniques. She usually uses found imagery as her point of departure. Recent exhibitions include the group show No One Should Call You A Dreamer at Galleri F15, Eyes On Your Instruments at One Night Only, Reshuffling Forest (Hellebou Vol. 3) at Holodeck and Out Of The Blue And Into The Black at Bergen Kjøtt (all 2011).http://www.azaralsharif.com

Signe Becker works as a freelance scenographer and artist. She holds a BA degree in Scenography from the Norwegian Theatre Academy in Fredrikstad (2006), and an MA degree in Visual Communication from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (2008). Her practice is wide-ranging and incorporates theatre, performance and dance productions as well as her own art projects. The last few years she has been working on a range of productions for different institutions including the Black Box Teater (2006-2012), Hordaland Theatre (2007), Rogaland Theatre (2008), Grusomhetens Teater (2009), Dansens Hus (2009), Dramatikkens Hus (2010), Teaterhuset Avant Garden (2011), and the Baltic Circle in Helsinki (2011). Since 2006, she has worked as an in-house scenographer for Verk Produksjoner, who won Production of the Year 2011 for “Det eviga leendet”. Together with the choreographer Ingri Fiksdal and the artist and musician Ingvild Langgård, Becker created the production “The Orchard Ballads” (2011) and the team is currently working on a new concert/performance project entitled “Night Tripper”.http://www.signebecker.com

Mari Kvien Brunvoll graduated from the Grieg Academy in Bergen in 2010. She uses her voice as a bass, drums, for the mediation of texts, and as abstract soundscapes with the help of electronic devices such as samplers and effect boxes. She also enjoys supplementing her musical expression with string instruments such as the kalimba and zither, as well as using bells and other percussion instruments. Kvien Brunvoll has had a number of vocal/electronica solo performances over the last five years, and has held concerts across Europe, in India, and in Norway, including at the Ekko Festival in Bergen, the Arts Festival of North Norway, Oslo Jazz Festival and Molde International Jazz Festival. In addition to her solo projects, Kvien Brunvoll is also part of the trio Building Instrument together with Øyvind Hegg-Lunde and Åsmund Weltzien and the lo-fi pop duo Tim Tyg with Johanne B. Svendsen. She also works collaboratively with Stein Urheim, and in 2011 they released the album Stein & Mari´s Daydream Community on Jazzland Recordings. She also works with cross-disciplinary projects, including installation and performance art.

Hildegunn Dale is a writer. Her literary debut was a collection of poems entitled Solkant published by Samlaget in 2003. Samlaget also published her children’s book Skugge over Grønskarvet (2007) and the poetry collections Elvedraumar (2004), Sea, say and see (2006) and Armane mine handlingar (2011). Fjell-Øygarden was published by H-press in 2008. Dale holds an MA in Literature from the University of Bergen, and has attended Skrivekunstakademiet in Hordaland. She is based at Misje, outside Bergen.

Erik J. Worsøe Eriksen was educated at Vestlandet Art Academy. He was one of the people behind Galleri Otto Plonk in Bergen (1995-1998). After that, he organised several large, independent exhibitions with Per Gunnar Eeg-Tverbakk and Eivind Furnesvik including Naust at Øygarden (2000). Eriksen was part of the artist collective Pelikan (with Eeg-Tverbakk and Sletnes) who organised their own exhibitions and social art events including Disk at BIT Teatergarasjen (1998), Bibliotekaren at Hordaland Art Centre (1999) and I Kunstnernes Hus at Kunstnernes Hus (1999). CHROMA II is his first exhibition of his own works since Pelikan disbanded at the end of the 1990s. Eriksen is currently involved in several of his own photography and art projects, as well as a collaboration with Yngvar Larsen, Darker#2, and an international street photography project with ten different photographers from all over the world.

John Hegre is a musician and composer from Bergen. He has been working as a technician, sound designer and musician since the late 1980s. He is part of several bands and constellations of musicians including Jazkamer, Noxagt, Golden Serenades, Public Enema, Rehab, Kaptein Kaliber, Bjørn Torske Band, and Bergen Impro Storband. Hegre also works with theatre and performance. His album releases include A Nice Place to Leave (2003), Colors Don’t Clash (2006) and Ballads with Maja S. K Ratkje (2006), all on Decoder.

Johannes Heldén is a writer and artist based in Stockholm. He has published the books Burner (2003); Det Underjordiska Systemet (2005); En Maskin Av Ljus (2006); Primärdirektivet / The Prime Directive, online Afsnit P (afsnitp.dk); Bug Bomb (2007); Väljarna/The Electorate (2008), online for Bonnier Lyrik; Science Fiction (2010); Entropi (2010); and Entropi Edition (2010). As an artist he works with both sound and images, and he released the CD Title Sequence on iDEAL recordings in 2010. Heldén holds a MA in Fine Art from Valand School of Fine Arts in Gothenburg (1999-2004). Recent solo exhibitions include The Archive at Stene Projects (2011) and Index of Lights in the Sky at Kalmar Konstmuseum (2011). He has shown previously with Volt in the form of the solo exhibitions A Better Tomorrow in Bergen (2008) and The Shape of Things to Come in Moss (2010).http://www.johanneshelden.com

Cesilie Holck made her literary debut in 2009 with a collection of short prose entitled Norg, published by Aschehoug. Her second book, the novel Lille Hjelper, will be published in autumn 2011 (Aschehoug).

Jenny Hval is an artist and writer. She has brought out two albums under the alias Rockettothesky and her third album, Viscera, was released in 2011 under her own name. In addition to these solo projects, she works with improvisation and electronic music in the duo Nude on Sand with Håvard Volden, and the two released their first album in 2012. Hval made her literary debut with the novel ”Perlebryggeriet” (Kolon Forlag, 2009). Her second book ”Inn i ansiktet” (Oktober forlag) was published in the autumn of 2012. Together with Inger Bråtveit, Hval created the performance ”Kvit søppel” in 2011. Previous exhibitions include “Innocence is kinky” at the Henie-Onstad Art Centre (2012).http://www.jennyhval.com

Marte Johnslien is an artist educated at the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo (2005). She works on a project basis and incorporates sculpture, installation, photography and publishing in her practice. Her works have an analytical quality as she queries established notions of knowledge and history. She often uses as her point of departure artistic and architectural ideas and practices that have shaped society and the public sphere. Johnslien has held solo exhibitions at Galleri Riis in Oslo (2011) and at 0047 Oslo (2008). She has also participated in group exhibitions at the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo (2008), the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Antwerp (2010), and the Lewis Glucksman Gallery in Cork (2008). Johnslien was recently commissioned to carry out two large public art projects in Bergen: the sculpture “Blindfold” (2011) for the Gulating square and a project at the new Faculty of Odontology, which opens in the autumn of 2012.http://www.martejohnslien.com

Cecilia Jonsson is a Swedish artist based in Bergen. She holds an MA degree from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design (2012) and has also participated in the MA programme ‘Nordic Sound Art’. She has previously taken part in group exhibitions at the F-Block Gallery in Bristol; the Singuhr Hörgalerie in Berlin; LiveInYourHead in Geneva; and at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde. Jonsson’s work often takes the form of artistic interpretations of empirical material, inspired by the research methods used in the natural sciences. Plants, water and iron form the backdrop of many of her works, where these elements operate as figures and thematics in imagined slippages between nature and technology, environmental concerns and social culture.http://www.ceciliajonsson.com

Stian Eide Kluge is a visual artist based in Oslo. He was educated at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and at the School of Visual Arts, Department for Film and Video in New York. He has been running the 1857 gallery together with Steffen Håndlykken since 2010. Recent exhibitions include ”The A Priori Echo And The Necks” at IMO in Copenhagen and the group show ”I Wish This Was A Song. Music in Contemporary Art” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo. He has also shown at the Oslo venues Kunstnerforbundet, Galleri Erik Steen, 0047 and Galleri Trafo, as well as at Galerei Gabriel Rolt in Amsterdam.

Knud Young Lunde is an artist whose installations are characterised by a playful approach to established meanings and commercial idioms, which he tends to undermine. He holds an MA from the Art Academy at the Bergen National Academy of the Arts (2009). He recently exhibited in Berlin and Warsaw, held a solo show at Entreé in Bergen (2010) and participated in BGO1 at the Bergen Art Museum (2010). In the spring of 2012, he will have a solo exhibition at NoPlace in Oslo. Lunde is part of the artist collective Ministry of Transport and Communications together with Aleksander Stav Lunde. Their last project consisted of an artistic intervention in an issue the journal Replikk dedicated the topic of transport.

Magnhild Øen Nordahl lives and works in Stockholm, where she began her MA at the Royal Institute of Art (KKH) in the autumn of 2012. She holds a BA degree from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design (2010). She has recently exhibited at Blank Projects in Cape Town; the Tin Sheds Gallery in Sydney, at The Armory Show in New York, at Svalbard, at Bergen Kunsthall and, most recently, at Entreé at Platform Stockholm. Øen Nordahl works predominantly with sculpture and installations. Her art projects often take as their point of departure investigations into the mechanical and aesthetic features of architecture and functional structures, such as frameworks for buildings or knots. Her most recent work deals with notions of craft and epistemology.http://www.magnhildnordahl.com

Linda Rogn is an artist working primarily with video. She holds an MA from the Art Academy at the Bergen National Academy of the Arts (2007). Recent projects include the group exhibitions Comfortable Battleground (2010) and The Bergen Biennale II: The Next Generation at the Woodmill in London (2010), contributions to the film festivals of Dresden and Berlin, and the solo show By her side but take my left arm too at Galleri Gathe (2008). She is part of the Bergen Ateliergruppe, and has curated a number of self-initiated projects many of them as part of Prosjekt Alvøen, which she runs.

Marthe Elise Stramrud is a visual artist. She is a member of the artist collective Gruppe 11 and the shared studio community at Flaggfabrikken. She holds a BA degree from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design (2011), and has also studied Photography at Valand Academy at the University of Gothenburg; Oslo Fotokunstskole; and Prosjektskolen Kunstskole i Oslo. Stramrud has recently participated in group exhibitions at Hobusepea in Tallinn; CC in Malmö; Akershus Art Centre; Bergen Kjøtt; de Joode & Kamutzki in Berlin, Tollbodallmenningen 39; and Sørlandsutstillingen. In 2012, she was awarded the Debutant Prize by the Norwegian Association of Art Societies for the photographic series Livingroom Poetics”. Stramrud works predominantly with photography through which she presents different sculptural compositions.http://www.martheelise.com

Yokoland is a design studio that works across various fields of graphic design and illustration – both commissioned and self initiated work. The studio focuses on close long-term collaborations with their clients, and is known for their work with cultural clients such as the independent record label Metronomicon Audio and publishing house Flamme Forlag. Yokoland consists of Aslak Gurholt Rønsen, Martin Lundell, Espen Friberg and Thomas Nordby. The studio is situated in Oslo and Trondheim.http://www.yokoland.com/

Monika Zawadzki is an artist working with installations, art objects and video. She is interested in social issues and inter-human relations. Her works tend to analyse extreme social attitudes resulting from the desire to dominate or to exclude. Recent solo exhibitions include Who sleeps with the dogs, wakes up with fleas (2008) and Anyone (2010) at Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw. Her practice incorporates graphic design and experiments with typography, and she is the art director of DIK Fagazine. In the period 2003-2006, she directed the non-commercial, artist-run gallery ZOO in Warsaw. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.

Øyvind Ådland is a writer. He made his literary debut in 2001 with Konfliktritt (Aschehoug), which was followed by Møksterhele sår på dagtid Biblioteket Gasspedal) in 2003 and Problemet med de to-tre studentene (Aschehoug) in 2006.

Mårten Spångberg is a performance related artist, choreographer and theoretic living and working in Stockholm. He has been active on stage as performer and creator since 1994, and has since 1999 created his own choreography’s from solos to larger scale works, which has toured internationally. He has collaborated with among others Xavier Le Roy, Christine De Smedt/Les Ballets C de la B, Jan Ritsema, Krõõt Juurak. With the architect Tor Lindstrand he initiated International Festival, an interdisciplinary practice merging architecture and choreography/performance. Since 1996 he has organized and curated festivals in Sweden and internationally. He initiated the network organisation INPEX in 2006. He has thorough experience in teaching both theory and practice. Between 2008 -2012 director of the MA program in choreography at the University of Dance in Stockholm. He has published numerous texts and edited a number of publications. In 2011 his first book “Spangbergianism” was published.

Notes on Utopia, Bergen

2012 - InPerformances

Notes on Utopia

Alexander Gerner, Marie Nerland, Ligia Soares

11-12-13. October 2012 at 19:00
14. October 2012 at 15:00

Project room 303
C.Sundts gt. 55, Bergen

Utopia starts with the phrase: Something is missing.Notes on Utopia is a performance which builds a situation for reflecting on contemporary utopia, on public space and on utopian thoughts in art and life.

The performance is the second stage of an ongoing project, the first part taking place at Atelier Concorde in Lisbon in 2011. Gerner, Nerland and Soares have previously collaborated on the performances Endings for Berlin at Bekarei, Berlin (2006), Let´s do endings again at Lydgalleriet in Bergen (2007) and Endings for Oslo at Black Box Teater/UKS in Oslo (2007).

Alexander Gerner is a German artist, playwright and theatre director based in Lisbon. He is also a researcher in Philosophy of Cognitive Sciences in several research projects on the philosophy of attention, the image, diagrammatic thinking and maps, Neuroaesthetics and Neuroethics and the cognitive foundation of the self. He is a member of the Centre of Philosophy of Science at the University of Lisbon where he recently finished his PhD on „Philosophical Investigations of Attention“ (2012). He co-edited the interdisciplinary ”Studies in Diagrammatology and Diagram Praxis” (College Publications London, 2010). In 2010 he presented a performance related to the topic of utopia: He who does not work shall not eat.

Marie Nerland is an artist and curator based in Bergen. She has been working with performance since 1999 in different collaborative projects. In 2008, she founded Volt, a curatorial project for contemporary art based in Bergen. http://www.v-o-l-t.no

Lígia Soares is a choreographer and playwright based in Lisbon. Her work has been presented in several venues and festivals in Portugal and Europe. In 2008 she was recipient of DanceWeb Scholarship programe for contemporary dance. Her last production ”La Famiglia” was presented in Guimaraes 2012- European Capital of Culture. She is artistic director of Máquina Agradável an artistic organization founded in 2002. http://www.maquinaagradavel.com

The project is in collaboration with BEK and is funded by Arts Council Norway and City of Bergen.

On the art institutions

The Norwegian Art Yearbook and Torpedo invite to a panel conversation with Audun Eckhoff, Per Gunnar Eeg-Tverbakk, Linus Elmes, Steffen Håndlykken and Randi Thommessen. The conversation moderated by Marie Nerland.

The participants represent a wide range of art institutions from artist-run places, a membership organization, private gallery to museum. They are gathered to share some of their experiences from their work with among others exhibition production and institution building. The goal is to create a conversation that cut across traditional boundaries in the art world, and that goes to the core of what it is like to work with contemporary art in Norway.

About the participants:

Audun Eckhoff is an art historian and director of The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design since 2009. Former director of the Bergen Art Museum (2002-2009) and curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (1995-2002).

Linus Elmes is an artist, curator and writer with a background from several artist-run projects among them ak28 and Ersta Konsthall. Director of UKS from 2009.

Steffen Håndlykken is an artist and has since 2010 run the gallery 1857 together with Stian Eide Kluge. 1857 shows work by young international artists, and emphasizes on producing new works in close collaboration with the artists.

Marie Nerland is co-editor of The Norwegian Art Yearbook (2010, 2011, 2012). Since 2008 she has run Volt in Bergen.

Randi Thommessen is trained artist and curator. She started Lautom Contemporary in 2007 in Oslo. Lautom shows Norwegian and international contemporary art and has participated in several international art fairs.

Making It All Work

2011 - InCuratorial Work

MAKING IT ALL WORK
- a seminar on work, labour and art

Søren Andreasen, Isabell Lorey and Camiel van Winkel

Saturday 22 of October 2011
11.00-16.00
Bergen Public Library

How does the field of art relate to work? In an interview, Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn emphasizes how he always uses the word ‘work’ about his artistic vocation. To be an artist is to work, and in using the word ‘work’, the work of the artist is linked to other types of work in contemporary society. Hirschhorn also points to how the word ‘work’ is an integral part of the term ‘artwork’. Within the field of art, there has been a transition from focusing on the complete work of art, to its work processes. Since the 1960s, one has increasingly understood art in terms of production and work. The seminar Making It All Work revolves around work, and it will examine working methods, practices and the understanding of work in social, historical and political contexts.

The title of the seminar, Making It All Work invites numerous interpretations. One way to interpret it, is how everything is turning into work – how life is, to different extents, about work – work as your life’s work and all the different aspects of work in these senses. An alternate reading of the title, is related to how one can make everything work -make everything function in your life and in the projects you are involved in. Both these interpretations relate to the themes of the seminar and to the work of the artist.

Isabell Lorey´s lecture is titled: The Becoming Public of Work: Virtuosity and Freedom
In her lecture, Lorey follows Paolo Virno’s argument that under Post-Fordism, labour based on service, communication and affect becomes public and therefore, in a sense, political. Hannah Arendt has compared the leading artists, the virtuosos, to those who are politically active: Those who, in her view, act politically, are exposed to the presence of others. She does, however, separate productive work from the sphere of political action. Contrary to Arendt, Virno argues that the distinction between public and private implodes under Post-Fordist conditions, as does the distinction between work and the sphere of political action. Because of their ideas of freedom and autonomy, Lorey will argue that cultural producers in this development behave less political than individualistic. Very often, they inhabit a special form of governable self-precarization.

Søren Andreasen´s lecture is titled What is not Work? A meditation on the use of the metaphor work in contemporary culture and how this figure affects the understanding of aesthetic experience.

Camiel van Winkel´s lecture is titled Middle Culture: Designers – Artists – Professionals He will approach the topic of art and work via the dialectics of art and mass culture. He will specifically discuss the role of design, the applied art form that somehow seems to transcend the high/low-dichotomy and is therefore an increasingly successful model of cultural production. Van Winkel will identify the effects this is having on contemporary art – the way the primacy of design has changed the things we expect from art and artists.

Biographies:

Søren Andreasen, visual artist who works and lives in Copenhagen. His latest exhibitions include Samling Mabuse, Overgaden, Copenhagen (2011), New Age, Brændergården, Viborg (2010) and ONTOTECH, Århus Kunstbygning (2009). He is part of the artists’ collective Koncern (1989-93) and the collaborative project rasmus knud (1999-2005). He has also curated several exhibitions, among them The Soft Shields of Pleasure, Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, Copenhagen (2008) and The Echo Show, The Tramway, Glasgow, with Lars Bang Larsen (2003). Andreasen also writes and publishes texts, among them the pamphlets QUALIA (2011) + teser og antiteser (Theses and Antitheses, 2010, self-published), the book catalogue ONTOTECH, Forlaget Århus Kunstbygning (2009), and a book made in collaboration with Lars Bang Larsen; The Critical Mass of Mediation, Idealistisk Internationale (October 2011). Teacher at Jutland Art Academy 2004-2010.

Isabell Lorey political scientist, teaches social sciences, cultural and gender studies as visiting professor at the Humboldt University Berlin and the Vienna University. From 2001-2007, she was assistant professor at Gender & Postcolonial Studies at the University of the Arts, Berlin. Lorey has published texts on feminist and political theory, and particularly: biopolitical governmentality, critical whiteness studies, political immunization, and precarization. Latest publications: Her studies on Roman struggles of order, the Plebeian, concepts of community and immunization were published in Figuren des Immunen. Elemente einer politischen Theorie at diaphanes, Zürich 2011. She co-edited Inventionen 1. Gemeinsam. Prekär. Potentia. Kon-/Disjunktion. Ereignis. Transversalität. Queere Assemblagen, ed. by Isabell Lorey, Roberto Nigro, Gerald Raunig, Zürich: diaphanes 2011 (for the English version see the issue of transversal Inventions among others, Isabell Loreys text Governmental Precarization). See also the recent issue of transversal on the world wide movements of occupation and assemblies in 2011.

Camiel van Winkel is professor of Visual Art at AKV|St. Joost (Avans University) in ’s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands. He teaches art theory at Sint-Lukas University College of Art and Design, Brussels, and is advisor at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. He is the author of Moderne leegte. Over kunst en openbaarheid (1999), The Regime of Visibility (2005) and De mythe van het kunstenaarschap (2007). His forthcoming book is titled During the Exhibition the Gallery Will Be Closed. Contemporary Art and the Paradoxes of Conceptualism (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2012). His current research, in close collaboration with sociologist Pascal Gielen, focuses on the hybridization of artistic practice. He also curates the exhibition Valéry Proust Museum/White Cube Fever in Mu.ZEE Museum for modern art inOostende, Belgium (opening 26 November 2011).

The seminar takes place during the festival Meteor in Bergen from October 20th - 29th 2011.
The seminar is presented in collaboration with Bergen Public Library and BIT Teatergarasjen and is funded by Arts Council Norway and Fritt ord.

The Nordic Pavilion by Ytter

Ytter from Bergen have temporarily moved their office to Gallery Noorus, where they initiate The Nordic Pavilion with works by (amongst others) Jacqueline Forzelius, Haukur Már Helgason, a hangover-brunch and a pink parachute as the backdrop for a meeting between Nordic and Baltic artists and curators.
Ytter will host two public talks and a seminar where the artistic role versus the role of the curator will be discussed, and where they wish to facilitate an exchange of experiences between their Nordic and Baltic guests. During the conversations they will talk about our experiences of self-organisation within the field of art and what happens when artistic and curatorial practice becomes more and more “professionalised”. In what way is our artistic integrity affected by power relations artists and curators in between? Is self-organisation in the field of art political art, or is it just an illustration of the method of organisation?

A conversation with Stefan Kaegi

2011 - InLectures, Writing & more

Stefan Kaegi
- conversation and artist presentation

Tuesday 15 November 2011 at 21:00 at Kafe Knøderen
BIT Teatergarasjen

An evening with Stefan Kaegi from Rimini Protokoll. Rimini Protokoll is often announced as the inventors of a new form of documentary theatre, exploring a theatre of performers who are not professional actors but experts or specialists out of their particular spheres of life – professionals of a theatre of the real world. Rimini Protokoll consists, besides Kaegi, of Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzel, who in various constellations have made theater-related work, live art, pieces for radio and installations together since 1999.

“Rimini Protokoll brings real life to the stage in a way that no other theatre form has been able to. The unmistakable strength of these performances lies above all in the fact that in spite of the proximity to the persons whom they portray a rift appears between the role and the personality, and with it an awareness of the risk, that life could gain the upper hand, and theatre could lose control over itself” (from Frankfurter Rundschau).

A conversation about instrumentalisation and autonomy in the context of public art
Bo Krister Wallström and Claire Doherty.
Moderated by Ketil Nergaard.
Introduction Marie Nerland

Notes on Utopia, Lisbon

2011 - InPerformances

Alexander Gerner, Marie Nerland, Ligia Soares

Atelier Concorde
Rua Leite Vasconcelos 43A,
1170-198 Lisboa

15 - 17th of August 2011 18.00 - 22.00
Free entrance & gazpacho

Notes on Utopia is a performance installation and a space for reflecting on contemporary utopia, on public space and on utopian thoughts in art.
Gerner, Nerland and Soares have previously collaborated on the performances Endings for Berlin in a cafe in Berlin (2006), Let's Do Endings Again at Lydgalleriet in Bergen (2007) and Endings for Oslo at Black Box Teater/UKS in Oslo (2007).

Alexander Gerner is an artist, theatre director based in Lisbon and a member of the Centre of Philosophy of Science at the University of Lisbon. His research is on topics of aesthetic experience in science, cinema and art. He is co-editor of the interdisciplinary ”Studies in Diagrammatology and Diagram Praxis” (London 2010). In 2010 he presented a performance related to the topic of utopia: He who does not work shall not eat. He writes on art, politics and science on his blog: http://jacarandascienceandart.blogspot.com/

Marie Nerland is an artist and curator based in Bergen, Norway. She has been working with performance since 1999 in different collaborative
projects. In 2008, she founded Volt, a curatorial project for contemporary art based in Bergen. She is co-editor of the Norwegian Art Year Book 2011 and editor of the anthology 25 with essays on contemporary art. She was co-editor of the Norwegian journal for performance and contemporary art 3t from1997-2007.

Ligia Soares is a portuguese artist working in the fields of dance, theatre and performance since 2000. She has been engaged in several national and international projects where she could investigate on the creation of characters fragmented by the inconsistencies of discourse towards action.

The project is funded by Arts Council Norway and City of Bergen.
Poster: Yokoland

On Lecture performance

2011 - InLectures, Writing & more

Never or Now symposium

26 - 27 January 2011

Bergen National Academy of the Arts
C. Sundtsgate 53, 5004 Bergen

In cooperation with the NEVER AND NOW Festival of Performance Art at Bergen Kjøtt,
Bergen National Academy of the Arts is arranging a seminar and workshop series to provide a theoretical and critical frame of reference to the workshops and festival.

Published by BIT Teatergarasjen (2010)
ISBN: 978-82-996678-4-5
Hard cover
248 pages
All texts in English and some is printed bilingual in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and German.25 is supported by Nordic Culture Point, Arts Council Norway, Stiftelsen Fritt Ord, City of Bergen and Hordaland County Council.

Cesilie Holck debuted with the book Norg (Aschehoug, 2009). Holck is known from numerous publications, including Kraftsentrum, but also as a singer in the band The Kanossa Gang.

Erlend O. Nødtvedt is editorial member in Vagant and has previously attended Skrivekunstakademiet in Bergen. The collection of poems Harudes (Aschehoug, 2008) is his first book. For this book Nødtvedt was awarded the Young Poetry Prize.

Mazdak Shafieian is editor in Au petit garage and editorial board member of Vinduet. His most recent book is a collection of poems Dyregravsmørke. (Gyldendal Forlag, 2006).

Hotel Hotel is the name of the solo project of Vegard Urne, singer and songwriter with a past as hardcore-enthusiast and blues lover. Urne is a guitarist, drummer, singer and songwriter in the old school country-band Empty Bottles Broken Hearts. He also has experience in the band Ai Phoenix and Hotel Hotel can sound like a kind of mixture of these bands. Hotel Hotel songs like "a glorious summers day, gone bad ...".

The book launch is in collaboration with Norsk Forfattersentrum Vestlandet.

One of our main themes in the Norwegian Art Yearbook 2010 is the internationalization of the art scene. An important, yet fairly little discussed issue, is the global increase of different Artist Residency-programmes during the last 10 to 15 years, and how this has influenced the contemporary art production.

The Artist residency-prorammes deals with accommodating artist’s travels and ideally become established internationally, while the organizers also want something in return, in the form of exhibitions or network. In addition to looking at the potential conflict between these two intentions, we wish to discuss how the dissemination of Artist Residencies influence artists’ way of working and today’s art production.

“If the background for a residency programme is formulated clearly and early on by those who host it, the residency is all the more likely to be successful.” (Artist and curator Karolin Tampere, from her conversation about Residency-programmes in Norwegian Art Yearbook 2010.)

“In today’s global capitalism, there is only one kind of desire worthy of support, and that is the desire for maximum absence.” (Writer and critic Dieter Lesage on the demands on artists of minimum presence during residencies in Norwegian Art Yearbook 2010.)

plan b are the British-born artists Sophia New and Daniel Belasco Rogers. Since 2002 they have made over 25 projects together that have been shown in 27 different cities. They work together collaboratively as well as pursuing solo projects. Alongside performances made specifically for a particular context or place, they make installations based on their GPS-traces, works on paper, durational performances, locative media projects, audio guides and video walks. . In 2001 they both received separate Artsadmin Artists' Bursaries, in 2004 plan b were artists in residence at Podewil, Berlin, and in 2006 Belasco Rogers received a stipend from the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. http://www.planbperformance.net

Toril Johannessen is an artist and member of the studio collective Flaggfabrikken - center for photography and contemporary art, which has hosted a residency since the autumn 2006. She is based in Bergen, and has recently returned from residencies in Vancouver and Berlin. She holds an MA from the Bergen National Academy of the Arts, and will start Maountain School of Arts (MSA^),Los Angeles January 2011. Her latest exhibitions include Bergen Kunsthall No.5, Bergen, CSA Space, Vancouver, and Lautom Contemporary, Oslo.http://www.toriljohannessen.no

Dieter Lesage is a philosopher and writer. He has been a visiting professor at the Piet Zwart Institute of the Willem De Kooning Academie in Rotterdam (2003-2005) and at the Institut für Kulturtheorie of the Leuphana Universität Lüneburg (2007). He is a professor and research coordinator at the Department of Audiovisual and Performing Arts (Rits) at the Erasmus University College Brussels. He is a member of the Editorial Board at Afterall (London-Antwerp-and member of the International Advisory Board of Art & Research – A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Methods (Glasgow). He is a co-editor, with Kathrin Busch, of A Portrait of the Artist as a Researcher: The Academy and the Bologna Process (Antwerp: MuHKA, 2007). With German artist Ina Wudtke, he curated the exhibitions A Portrait of the Artist as a Researcher (Freiraum/quartier21, Vienna, 2007) and A Portrait of the Artist as a Researcher 2.0 (Beursschouwburg, Brussels, 2008) and recently published the book Black Sound White Cube (Vienna: Loecker Verlag, 2010). Since 2006, Dieter Lesage lives in Berlin.

The seminar is held in English.
Entrance: NOK 50 to be paid cash at the entrance, includes food.
Registration before September 20th to norskkunstaarbok(at)gmail.com. Limited number of seats.

This seminar is organised by the editors of the Norwegian Art Yearbook 2010: Erlend Hammer, Ketil Nergaard and Marie Nerland. The seminar and launch is supported by City of Bergen and Arts Council Norway and organised in collaboration with KiK, Hordaland Art Centre and Volt.

Artistic Strategies in Contemporary Dance − The Dancer as an Artist

2010 - InCuratorial Work

Artistic Strategies in Contemporary Dance - The Dancer as an Artist
- a seminar

During the past few decades, substantial changes have taken place in the use and comprehension of the dancer as a creative performer in the field of contemporary dance, alongside changes in how the dancer views his/her own work and the artistic process and practice. The role of the dancer has developed more along the lines of the role of the artist in contemporary dance. What are the dancer’s artistic strategies and materials, and how does she work with these? Which parts does the dancer play in the realm of contemporary dance?

The seminar presents four new lectures by people that are, in different ways, involved in the field of contemporary dance: Ramsay Burt who is a professor of dance history, cultural sociologist Rudi Laermans, the dancer Loan Ha and the philosopher and dramaturg Bojana Kunst. After the lectures, a panel discussion will be held. The seminar is moderated by Josefine Wikström.

The field of contemporary dance maps out and tests performative concepts and dramaturgy. There is a great range of practices and methods. Many choreographers have a background as dancers themselves, and often work in both roles. Today, many contemporary dancers choose to start choreographing performances themselves, and this is a tendency we see at work in Norway as well. The artistic methods of many choreographers consists of processes in which the dancers contribute directly to the choreographies and the performance material. They provide the dancers with what may be described as artistic licence, an opportunity to help shape the performance. In other projects, however, the dancer works within the choreographer’s materials and concept.

Only rarely is the dancer shed light on. Or if she is focused on, the body is often taken as a point of departure. In Routledge’s Dance Studies Reader from 1998, Alexandra Carter writes in the introduction to «Performing Dance», a chapter which discusses the role of the dancer: «Whereas in other parts of this Reader the challenge was to find representative work from the wide section available, for this Part, the difficulty was in finding writing by dancers at all, especially on their experience of performance». It is still, as a rule, usually choreographers who comment on the performative part of the field of contemporary dance. Few dancers write. Few dancers are interviewed about their art. Few dancers are included in fora of discussion. And many dancers resist writing about, verbally expressing, or «putting into words» their artistic strategies and methods, and likewise their meanings and points of view on contemporary dance and the field within which it is situated. Dancers’ experiences and viewpoints have been largely ignored within discourse on and discussions within contemporary dance.

How does the dancer see himself in relation to being an artist? Anthoni Dominguez writes, in ballet tanz’ TEAM year book 2008, titled «DANCE IN ART»: «The use of the body as living raw material during a performance enables the artist to reduce the distance between himself and his art work. Even before any activity takes place, the body manifests itself in both material and a temporal dimension by its simple presence.» In the same publication, choreographer Ben J. Riepe states: «I appreciate dance (...) but only as a working method, as a tool, as something with which to create an artwork».

Ramsay Burt's lecture is titled Contemporary dance and the politics of historical consciousness. A number of European dance artists in the past fifteen have cited past dance works either through reconstructions, re-stagings and re-enactments, or through making new works that explicitly respond to works from the past. Given that history and memory are important to the construction of identities, reconstructions are an important means of understanding the relationship between past and present. An articulation of historical consciousness can be used to assert the right to define one's own chosen history rather than accept an official canon. Some European dance artists have articulated concerns about the way a globalised market for contemporary dance that has developed since the 1970s often influences and determines the kinds of works that are taken up and shown at key dance festivals and performance venues. One aspect of the workings of this market is a flattening of history. This paper argues that radical experimental work which articulates historical consciousness, challenges its beholders to pay attention in a focused, intense, active, engaged way that is very different from the diffuse inattention that is all that is required when beholding the same old tired choreographic devices within blandly uniform dance works. Through a discussion of a few recent examples, this paper will argue that the development of a historical consciousness among experimental dance artists can be seen as an act of resistance to the anaesthetising effects of the globalised dance market.

Rudi Laermans' lecture is titled Creating Together: Artistic Collaborations in Contemporary Dance. Based on extensive in-depth interviews with dancers from the Brussels dance community, the lecture will identify some of the principal motivations behind and stakes involved in collaborative practices in contemporary dance – such as unrecognized co-authorship, the production of a social and artistic 'common', and the dynamics of trust between a choreographer and the dancers during a rehearsal process.

Bojana Kunst's lecture Dancing Labour will connect the question about the strategies of the dancers to the ways in which dancers work today and how their work has changed with the expanded notion of choreography, research and new discursive contexts. She will relate this to political issues like postfordism, the continual nomadism of dancers and the multiplicity of time. What has changed in the work of the dancer today, with new ways of production, and how does this influence the body?

Loan Ha’s lecture is titled Tracing My Questions: About Becoming a Dancer. She will reflect on becoming a dancer and how the questions she has asked herself have continued to inspire, affect, and change her work. In 2005, while still a student at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels, she interviewed teachers, dancers and choreographers in her educational environment about what it meant to them to be a practitioner.

Biographies:

Ramsay Burt is professor of dance history at De Montfort University, U.K and founding editor, with Prof. Susan Foster, of Discourses in Dance. He is the author of The Male Dancer: Bodies Spectacle, Sexualities (1995, 2007); Alien Bodies: Representations of Modernity, Race and Nation in Early Modern Dance (1998); Judson Dance Theater: Performative Traces (2006); and, with Valerie Bringinshaw, Writing Dancing Together (2009).

Loan Ha has studied at the School of Contemporary Dance in Oslo (2000-2002) and the P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels (2002-2006). In addition to working on her own and other co-choreographer’s projects while at P.A.R.T.S., she danced in several repertoire performances by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, and toured with productions by William Forsythe (Die Befragung des Robert Scott) and Trisha Brown (Set and Reset and ”Lateral Pass - Reworked”). Since the summer of 2006, Loan Ha has worked as a freelance dancer, her projects including the Norwegian multi-medial performance ”Terje”, which was staged in Yokohama, Japan – and The Kansas City Shuffle for Canadian Sandy Williams, which was staged in Ghent, Leuven and Brussels, Belgium. Since 2006, she has worked with impure company/Hooman Sharifi. She is also involved in projects with Kristina Gjems and Human Works (Anne-Linn Akselsen og Adrian Minkowicz).

Bojana Kunst is a philosopher, dramaturg and performance theoretician. She works as a visiting professor at the University of Hamburg (Performance Studies) and teaches at the Slovenian University of Primorska. She also works as a dramaturg and artistic collaborator. She is a member of board of editors in the journals Maska, Amfiteater, and Performance Research. Her essays have appeared in numerous journals and publications and she has taught and lectured extensively in Europe. She has published three books, including Impossible Body (Ljubljana 1999), Dangerous Connections: Body, Philosophy and Relation to the Artificial (Ljubljana, 2004).

Rudi Laermans is senior professor in sociological theory at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium and also a permanent guest teacher in the theoretical programme at P.A.R.T.S. He has published extensively on dance policy, general trends within contemporary dance and the work of particular choreographers such as Anne Theresa De Keersmaeker, Vincent Dunoyer, Jan Fabre, deepblue and Meg Stuart. He has recently directed research projects on globalization, modes of believing within Western Islam, cultural heritage, the cultural omnivore and alternative pop music. He has published widely on social systems theory, French poststructuralism and cultural theory, and is currently writing a book on contemporary dance which will appear in Spring 2011.

Josefine Wikström is an independent curator and writer. She has written for various dance and arts magazines, and guest-edited Paletten with choreographer Malin Elgán in 2008. She works with the independent project Word on questions about the production and distribution of art, and is involved in the performing arts collective IINPEX, in which she has initiated projects such as Hula-Hula To Tensta Konsthall. She has collaborated with artists International Festival in among other projects The Theatre. In collaboration with Malin Elgán, she created a choreographic score for the exhibition Undersöka Form at the National Museum in Sweden in 2008, and curated the lecture series Publishing and other activities in 2009. She was invited as “satellite-curator” to Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm in spring 2010. Wikström has a BA in Comparative Literature, and has studied dance at London Contemporary Dance School. She recently completed an MA in philosophy at Middlesex University in London.

The seminar is part of the international dance festival Oktoberdans. The seminar is presented in collaboration with BIT Teatergarasjen and is funded by Arts Council Norway.

On Correspondence

2009 - InCuratorial Work

On Correspondence
- three lectures

Tony Chakar, Eyal Weizman, Pieter T'Jonck

The Impact of the Space on the Performance
Pieter T'Jonck

24 October 2009
Rom 8
Bergen Academy of Art and Design

Pieter T'Jonck is an architect, but equally active as a dance and theatre critic for various media since 1983: Veto (1983-85), De Standaard (1985-2000), De Tijd (2001-06), De Morgen (since 2006) and Klara (since 2006). Besides, he published regularly about performing arts, architecture and urbanism in journals such as Etcetera, DWB, Ballettanz and A+, and contributed to books. From 1999 - 2005 he was teaching at the University of Ghent and he has been teaching stage design and scenography at the Academy of Antwerp.

Several thematic strands meet in T’Jonck’s oeuvre. Dance and theatre concern representation, they allow us to gain insight in the world and ourselves. In the 18th century theatre (both as space and concept) was a social laboratory in which new models of living together were being explored. Though this notion of theatre is no longer valid today, T'Jonck has a particular interest in the transformation of these concepts and practices in today’s performing arts. Fuelled by a historical awareness, newspaper reviewing is T’Jonck’s medium to probe the manifold ways in which dance and theatre create a present-day portrait of the world. Criticism as a testimony that links fascination for what is still all too close with the need to take distance and develop a language that facilitates analysis. (from Sarma.be)

The Eighth Day
God Created the World in Seven Days. This Is the Eighth Day
Tony Chakar

1 December 2009
Bergen Academy of Art and Design

The Eighth Day is an ongoing investigation, currently taking the form of a lecture-performance series, that began in the aftermath of the Israeli attacks on Lebanon in July 2006, however not directly related to these attacks. During and after the Israeli military operation, images from Lebanon's recent past (the civil wars of 1975-1990) inundated public realms (space and psyche) as well as discourse – becoming, at times, very difficult to endure –, proving that the Lebanese wars (regarded as Catastrophic) are still cast in the unspoken.

The Eighth Day weaves a collection of elements – texts, images, songs, videos, publicity spots, etc. - that are metaphorical manifestations of the space and time of the Catastrophe, and attempts to identify the necessary strategies for redeeming the past-as-image.

Tony Chakar is an architect and writer. His works include: A Retroactive Monument for a Chimerical City: Ashkal Alwan, Beirut (1999); All That is Solid Melts Into Air: Ashkal Alwan, Beirut (2000); Four Cotton Underwear for Tony: Ashkal Alwan, TownHouse Gallery, Cairo, also shown in many European cities as part of Contemporary Arab Representations, a project curated by Catherine David (2001-02) and in the exhibition Closer at the Beirut Art Centre (2009) ; Rouwaysset, a Modern Vernacular (with Naji Assi): Contemporary Arab Representations, the Sharjah Biennial and Sao Paolo, S.A.(2001-03); Beirut, the Impossible Portrait: The Venice Biennial (2003); The Eyeless Map: Ashkal Alwan, Beirut (2003); My Neck is Thinner than a Hair (2004), a lecture/performance with Walid Raad and Bilal Khbeiz, shown in different locations around the world; A Window to the World (2005): Ashkal Alwan, Beirut; Various Small Fires (2007): The Royal College of Art, London; Memorial to the Iraq War (2007): ICA, London; Yesterday's Man (2007): a play-performance with Rabih Mroué and Tiago Rodrigues showing in several European cities; The Eighth Day (2008): an ongoing project in the form of a lecture/performance. He also contributes to European art magazines, and teaches History of Art and History of Architecture at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux arts (ALBA).

spatial forensics
Eyal Weizman

1 December 2009
Bergen Academy of Art and Design

Eyal Weizman is an architect based in London. He studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London and completed his PhD at the London Consortium, Birkbeck College. He is the director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College (roundtable.kein.org). Since 2007 he is a member of the architectural collective decolonizing architecture in Beit Sahour/Palestine (decolonizing.ps). Since 2008 he is a member of B'Tselem board of directors (btselem.org). Weizman has taught, lectured, curated and organised conferences in many institutions worldwide. His books include The Lesser Evil (Nottetempo, 2009), Hollow Land (Verso Books, 2007), A Civilian Occupation (Verso Books, 2003), the series Territories 1, 2 and 3, Yellow Rhythms and many articles in journals, magazines and edited books. Weizman is a regular contributors to many journals and magazines he is a member of editorial board several journals and magazines. Weizman is the recipient of the James Stirling Memorial Lecture Prize for 2006-2007

The seminar is arranged by BIT Teatergarasjen and Danse og Teatersentrum.
Pieter T'Jonck's lecture is part of the theatre festival Meteor 2009.
The seminar is funded by Fritt Ord.

Listen for the body of the other

2008 - InCuratorial Work

”Listen for the body of the other”
- On choreography, relations and diversity

The seminar presents lectures by Goran Sergej Pristaš, Ivana Ivković and Tomislav Medak, Solveig Gade, Hannah Hurtzig and Thomas Frank. They have in common a theoretical approach to the fields they are working within; artistic, dramaturgic work, curating and writing about contemporary art, dance, theatre and performance. The title of the seminar is from an interview in the magazine Frakcija no. 20/21 with the choreographer and dancer Nikolina Pristaš from BADco. The poetic sentence contains different aspects and key words for the seminar; relation, the body, to listen and the other.

Zagreb's non-institutional cultural scene includes an interesting underlying communicational web of several self-organized platforms of exchange. In the lecture Pristaš, Ivković and Medak will briefly describe 5 key initiatives: an independent policy discussion platform - Policy_Forum that grew from the need to be more vocal in advocating changes in cultural policy issues in Croatia bringing together operators from the non-institutional cultural scene because of official cultural policies on municipal and state levels being either non-existent or sorely lagging behind the actual cultural production; Clubture (Klubtura) – a tactical network of independent cultural organizations from numerous Croatian cities based on programme exchange, decentralization of cultural production and intensification of cultural activity in smaller towns and cities; EkS-scena (Experimental Free Scene), a self-organized working platform of young dancers and choreographers, coordinating programmes that have almost single-handedly revitalized Croatia's contemporary dance scene education and production in the past six years; Zagreb – Cultural Kapital of Europe 3000 (ZCK3000), a collaborative platform by eight of Zagreb's more prominent and active non-institutional cultural organizations from different fields (performing arts, social and media theory, architecture and urban planning), visual arts); and Reclaim the City, an urban and public domain oriented, activism driven initiative stemming from the cultural scene, but with a real impact in the political life of the city of Zagreb.

Goran Sergej Pristaš is a dramaturge, a professor at the Academy of Drama Arts in Zagreb, a program co-ordinator in Centre for Drama Art in Zagreb. Founder and until recently editor-in-chief of the performing arts magazine Frakcija and one of initiators of the project Zagreb – Cultural Kapital of Europe 3000.

Ivana Ivković studies at the Department of Dramaturgy at the Academy of Drama Arts in Zagreb. She is a member of the editorial board of Frakcija Journal for Performing Arts and also collaborates wit the 3rd Program of Croatian Radio, several publications, the Center for Drama Art and has worked as the general coordinator of Zagreb-Cultural Kapital of Europe 3000. She collaborates as dramaturge with two Zagreb based independent companies oour and BADco. She is co-editor of the textual and pictorial reader “DemoKino- Virtual Biopolitical Agora” with Davide Grassi (Aksioma and Maska, 2006)

Tomislav Medak studied Philosophy, German and Literature at the Philosophical Faculty in Zagreb. The focus of his work is social, biopolitical and media theory, in particular socio-theoretical implications of new technologies and new media. He is currently co-ordinating a theory and research program and the publishing activities at the Multimedia Institute in Zagreb. Recently he directed his research work at social and cultural policies - investigating wider implications of and alternatives to existing IPR frameworks, protection of the public domain and regimes of management and representation of creative production. Tomislav Medak is active as performer and choreographer with the Zagreb based dance company BADco.

Kunst, sted og offentlighet
Solveig Gade

Friday 31st of October 2008 at 13.00
Bergen National Academy of the Arts, Marken 37, 3rd floor

The lecture will start with a mapping and critical discussion of several major theoretical positions in the relations between art, public space and the site-specific. With this as a background and with a special focus on inclusion and exclusion, Solveig Gade will look closer on Christoph Schlingensief and Center for Urbanitet and Dialog’s attempt in several relational orientated and site-specific projects to create temporary spaces for critic publicity. Her lecture will bring some theoretical reflections to one of the major projects at this years Oktoberdans, Dans til folket (Dance to the people) which take place at several locations in the City of Bergen.

Solveig Gade is cand. mag. in Nordic language and science of literature. In spring this year she finished her PhD. thesis about relational and intervening strategies in contemporary art. She has written articles about contemporary art and performing art in the anthology Performative Realism and for the magazines Kritik, Glänta, Peripeti and 3t. Gade was co-editor of the Danish magazine Teater 1 from 2000-2004 and since 2005 co-editor of the magazine Peripeti. She is working at the University of Copenhagen and as a dramaturge at the Royal Danish Theatre.

On Experts, Non-Knowledge and the Buzzing of the Archive
Hannah Hurtzig
Saturday 1st of November at 13.00
Hordaland Kunstsenter

For the last eight years, Thomas Frank has worked as curator, dramaturge and producer for international performing arts projects with different institutions in Frankfurt, Berlin and Vienna. In every place, he had to cope with introducing unknown artists with experimental projects and unfamiliar content. The presentation by Thomas Frank will reflect on the continuities in the development of artistic principles in contemporary theatre and the reflection of the production circumstances in the different places. About changing from one place to another with certain artistic proposals in the baggage and how the places changed the ways of collaborations with artists.

Thomas Frank has background from theatre, communication and media studies at Universität Leipzig and University of Glasgow. From 2000 to 2004 he was assistant artistic director, dramaturge and curator at Künstlerhaus MOUSONTRUM in Frankfurt a.M. where he was curator of international arts programs such as ‘plateaux – international platform for young theatre directors’ and the ‘international summer academy’. In 2004 he gave lectures for independent theatre / off theatre at the University of Music & Theatre Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Leipzig. From 2005 to 2007 he worked as dramaturge and head of the artistic program at Sophiensaele in Berlin. He has been an executive producer of national and international performing arts productions. In 2006 he was artistic advisor of the ‘breathing space’ program at Arnolfini Bristol, Green Room Manchester and Tramway Glasgow (UK). He has been a guest dramaturge at Sydney Theatre Company and the National Playwrights Conference Perth 2006 (Australia). In 2007 the founder of ‘brut Wien’, an interdisciplinary production centre for performing arts in Vienna where he works as artistic director and business management (brut-wien.at).

Prices: 30, - for each lecture. The seminar is part of Oktoberdans.
The seminar is in collaboration with BIT Teatergarasjen and is supported by Arts Council Norway and Fritt ord.

3t

2007 - InPublications

3t - journal for performance theory and practice was established in Bergen, Norway, in 1996
with the aim to create a forum for reflection on the performing arts by publishing interviews, performance texts, visual contributions and theoretical articles.3t was funded by Arts Council Norwayhttp://www.trete.no

Endings for Oslo

2007 - InPerformances

Alexander Gerner, Marie Nerland, Ligia P. Soares

1 November 2007
Black Box Teater, Oslo

Endings is an ongoing performance - and collaborative project where the three artists meet and work together in different cities. These meetings ends in each place in a performance that explores the theme of "endings" and the city / locality where the performance takes place. Earlier versions have been Endings for Bergen in an artist studio, Endings for Lisbon in a closed down bookstore, Endings for Aberystwyth at the Center for Performance Research in Wales, Endings for Berlin in a newly opened bakery and Let's do Endings again at Lydgalleriet in Bergen.

With Endings the artists tries out different approaches on how to invite the audience into the room and interact with them. Thematically, they work with the fluent transition between different forms of endings and different ways of thinking what on what it can mean to finish something.

The performance is part of Black Box Theatre and UKS festival Performance Program 07 and is funded by Arts Council Norway.

Let’s Do Endings Again

2007 - InPerformances

Alexander Gerner, Marie Nerland, Ligia P. Soares

10 February 2007 at 11.00

Lydgalleriet
Østre Skostredet 3
Bergen

Endings is an ongoing performance - and collaborative project where the three artists meet and work together in different cities. These meetings ends in each place in a performance that explores the theme of “endings” and the city / locality where the performance takes place. Earlier versions have been Endings for Bergen in an artist studio, Endings for Lisbon in a closed down bookstore, Endings for Aberystwyth at the Center for Performance Research in Wales and Endings for Berlin in a newly opened bakery.

With Endings the artists tries out different approaches on how to invite the audience into the room and interact with them. Thematically, they work with the fluent transition between different forms of endings and different ways of thinking what on what it can mean to finish something.

The performance is funded by Arts Council Norway, Fond for lyd og bilde and City of Bergen.

Endings for Berlin

2006 - InPerformances

Alexander Gerner, Marie Nerland, Ligia P. Soares

8 December 2006 at 21.00
Bekarei
Dunckerstraße 23, 10437 Berlin

Endings is an ongoing performance - and collaborative project where the three artists meet and work together in different cities. These meetings ends in each place in a performance that explores the theme of “endings” and the city / locality where the performance takes place. Earlier versions have been Endings for Bergen in an artist studio, Endings for Lisbon in a closed down bookstore and Endings for Aberystwyth at the Center for Performance Research in Wales.

With Endings the artists tries out different approaches on how to invite the audience into the room and interact with them. Thematically, they work with the fluent transition between different forms of endings and different ways of thinking what on what it can mean to finish something.
The performance is funded by Arts Council Norway, Fond for lyd og bilde and City of Bergen.

The seminar presents four of the most interesting theorists in the contemporary dance field. They will give lectures based on topics they are concerned about and are working with now. With the seminar the aim is to present four thinkers that together give a very good introduction to what is happening within contemporary dance theory and research about dance. They represent different focus within the theoretical fields of contemporary dance. They combine all artistic and/or dramaturgical work with writing about dance - activities which they see as closely interrelated.

Bojana Cvejić is a performer and performance theorist. She works among others with the director Jan Ritsema in Brussels. She has written several articles among others published in the Slovenian journal Maska and the Croatian Journal Frankcija. Her works and texts are highly political and challenge ideas of contemporary dance and performance. Cvejić is teaching performance theory at PARTS in Brussels.

Jeroen Peeters has studied history and philosophy and works in Brussels as a critic, dramaturge and curator. He is working on a book about and with the choreographer Meg Stuart on how the body and perception in dance and performance becomes a discursive area, a place for critical approach and analysis of the world we live in. Peeters is a writer and critic with dance and performance as his field of study and he is the founder and editor of the website sarma.be Peeters has collaborated with, among others Frankfurter Küche, Sabina Holzer, Anne Juren, Thomas Lehmen, Vera Mantero, Sarah Michelson, Martin Nachbar, Lisa Nelson, Carlos Pez and Superamas. He is currently artistic collaborator for Meg Stuart / Damaged Goods.

Helmut Ploebst has a background from media studies and art history at the University of Vienna and a Ph.d from 1989 on the ideologies of art in Vienna between 1918 and 1938. As a writer, he has published a large number of articles and reviews on dance and performance. As a guest curator he has worked for dietheater vienna and the festival ImpulsTanz. In 2001 he published the book "No wind no word. New choreography in the Society of the Spectacle " with portraits of nine choreographers. Ploebst also works as a critic and writer for Der Standard (Vienna), as well as ballettanz (Berlin), tanz-journal (Munich) and several other print media. He is initiator and one of the founders of the site CORPUS, a website devoted to contemporary dance. corpusweb.net

Mårten Spångberg is an artist who lives and works in Berlin and Stockholm. His own artistic practice focuses on distribution, accountability and ownership, particularly in relation to decentralized modes of experience. Together with the architect Tor Lindstrand he runs International Festival that is working with an expanded and immaterial form of performance. Spångberg has worked as dramaturg for a number of choreographers and as a curator in addition to his own artistic projects. His solo performance "Heja Sverige" is presented at this year's Oktoberdans.

The seminar is part of BIT Teatergarasjen's festival Oktoberdans 2006.
It is funded by Arts Council Norway and Fritt ord.

Endings for Aberyswyth

On Saturday, 22 July, CPR presents the final performance as part of its
Summer Shift 2006 - CPR’s international summer school. Endings for Aberystwyth is an exploration of the theme of ‘endings’, questioning the
nature of performance itself and will explore familiar sights and sounds of
Aberystwyth, as well as create a uniquely challenging performance event.

Jacob, Marie and Laure have performed other versions of ‘Endings’ over the
past year in Bergen, Norway and Lisbon, Portugal.

The performance for Aberystwyth has been created in a workshop led by Jacob
Wren and Laure Ottmann of Montreal based P.M.E. and Marie Nerland for the
CPR’s Summer Shift. The 11 participants and three guest teachers have been
working over ten days researching and gathering material to perform over a
five hour period at The Castle Theatre, Aberystwyth.

The performance will last approximately five hours and the audience is free
to come and go during that time.

‘Endings for Aberystwyth’ is a further exploration of some of the themes and
techniques begun by Jacob Wren and Laure Ottmann (of Montréal based company
PME) and their collaborator, Marie Nerland. ‘Endings…’ will involve
participants as performers and collaborators - searching for ways to be with
the audience in as warm and natural a manner as possible, but at the same
time also activating a critical process (both within the performer and
within the spectator): a process that relates directly to the central
questions of theatre and performance.

Participants will undergo many complimentary levels of experience and
artistic exploration: to be in close proximity to the audience and navigate
utilizing a very high level of non-performance; to create alongside the
teachers - from scratch - a body of new material gradually teased out from
our collective reflections upon the theme, to experience how an open-ended
process of searching, where the outcome and the style of the work is never
fully decided upon, can produce startlingly refreshing results.

‘Endings for Aberystwyth’ is both an exploration of the theme of ‘endings’
and a workshop which questions many of our pre-conceptions regarding the
nature of performance itself, searching for new conceptual attitudes and
approaches for inviting an audience into a space and genuinely interacting
with them. In some ways growing out of a dissatisfaction with the
conventions of the stage, the workshop is loosely based on the premise that
it is difficult yet possible (and even necessary) to create a condition in
which both the performer and spectator are deeply engaged in a common
project and that the questions surrounding such attempts have the potential
to generate ongoing insights into why we still need performance.

CPR is grateful to Wales Arts International and the Québec Government
Office, London for financial support for this project.

Endings for Lisbon

2006 - InPerformances

What keeps you awake

2004 - InPerformances

display, Alexander Gerner, Håvard Pedersen

BIT Teatergarasjen
15 - 16 -17.04 2004

And we will all make a pause / a break / a siesta or concentrate on whatsoever – this childhood thing when you go to a holiday camp and the responsible tells you to shut off the lights and go to sleep and then you still talk in the dark or put your sleeping bags together and put the little lamps on to still pass the night talking / whispering.

The performance What Keeps You Awake was a collaboration between display and Alexander Gerner.
Håvard Pedersen was playing LPs during the performance. The performance consisted of video materials, texts, conversations, live telephone calls and music. The audience was sitting on sofas and madrasses. On stage there was also a tent, a hammock, a chocolate cake and a bar.

The performance was co-produced by BIT Teatergarasjen and supported by City of Bergen.

Photos: Thor Brødreskift

Kompressor: CD with electronic music

The CD is a documentation of the electronic music scene in Bergen from about 1993 to 2003, with a rich 16-page CD-cover with history and flyers.
Kompressor is a tribute to all those who have helped to make Bergen a good place to be in the past decade - to club- and party organizers, flyer designers and DJs.
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the realization of the CD.

Risiko
- an anthology with new-commisioned texts by Danjel Andersson, Knut Ove Arntzen, Tim Etchells, Christine Peters, Arnd Wesemann, Jacob Wren
The anthology also has an overview of all performances and projects that have been arranged by BIT Teatergarasjen until 2003.
Editors: Sven Åge Birkeland, Marie Nerland

Kompressor
- CD with electronic music
Tracks by TeeBee, Lupo, Skolpender, Kahuun, Neural Network, David Brown, Polar, Mushroom, Syklon, Information, Kaptain Kaliber
The CD is a documentation of the electronic music scene in Bergen from about 1993 to 2003, with a rich 16-page CD-cover with history and flyers.
Kompressor is a tribute to all those who have helped to make Bergen a good place to be in the past decade - to club- and party organizers, flyer designers and DJs.
Collected by Anders Gogstad, Marie Nerland, Thomas Paulsen, Mikal Telle
Mastered by Jørgen Træen/Duper.

The title Ferdsskriveren is the tachograph or “black box” that records everything that happens in the cockpit during a flight. These are boxes that digitally records everything that happens. The idea of the publication is to create a different kind of documentation where some themes are voyage; risk, landing, take off, turbulence and to be on the way. Ferdsskriveren enables fast forward and rewind, extract fragments and several voices.

Fall

2003 - InPerformances

display, Håvard Pedersen, Lars Ramslie. Torunn Skjelland

Hordaland kunstsenter
5 - 6 Desember 2003
at 20.00

I get an idea, and always when I get the idea immediately, I panic from it. Then I know that it is the right thing to do. If I don’t panic from it I don’t bother to do it. What you are afraid of is exactly what you are supposed to do. Only that makes me jump to another pattern, jump to another experience

The performance Fall was a collaboration between display, the musician Håvard Pedersen, the writer Lars Ramslie and the visual artist Torunn Skjelland. The wrestlers Alexander Schive and Øyvind Kandal were also participating.
The performance consisted of three large projections, texts, acts and live electronic music.

The performance was in collaboration with HKS and Bergen Atletklubb.
It was co-producec by BEK - Bergen Center for Electronic Art and supported by Arts Council Norway and City of Bergen.

Fiel Amigo - A Friend That Can Be Trusted

2003 - InPerformances

DISPLAY + ALEXANDER GERNER + FOKUDA + ROY LERVÅG

An experiment: sit down and try to think about all the friends you have had. Start with the friends you have now, write down their names. And then think back. Write down the friends from earlier, people you have lost contact with, people who are no longer your friends, people you started to dislike, people who will always be your friend. Make a map of your friends, who you met through whom, connections, friends of you that became friends through you, that became better friends than you ever were. Some people have almost the same friends all their lives. When they meet they don’t really have to talk, they know everything, they remember each other being children.

When I meet people I have an instinct feeling of who will become a friend. Like sitting next to a stranger in a bus, and getting this feeling that he will become your best friend for a while. And just to say something you ask where the bus goes, even if you have taken the same bus several times before. And then when you get off the bus he is standing there waiting for you.

display and Gerner were both participating at the urban research platform SONDE at the biennale Artgenda 2002 in Hamburg. After the biennale we started to create a new project together. We first started with links between Norway and Portugal and one of the most important links is the bacalao. Bacalao used to be food everyone in Portugal could afford - it was called fiel amigo which means a friend that can be trusted. From there our project developed into a performance about friendship.

The performance is a traveling logbook (stories, videomaterial, interviews, photos) and a memory space of personal links/friendships. It is based on video (interviews, documentations about friends), live electronic music by Fokuda, texts (e.g. pop-songlyrics, sayings) and minimal/concentrated stories about how someone became a friend, how people make part of your own history, how some others never will, about all the strangers you only meet for a short time, but who have stayed in your memory and the friends you have lost due to some reason or other over the years. The logbook is an ongoing process under development, growing and changing, where ever the performance is presented.

The atmosphere Fiel Amigo creates is like a workshop or studio. Fragments of memory material like stories and photographs are put on the walls or on the tables, as well as books and papers where people can draw maps of their friends and write down stories about friends and meetings with strangers, which we collect afterwards or integrate into the performance. Fiel Amigo always asks the local people about friendship before the presentations and include a video-documentation of this within the performance. The performance artist & chef Roy Lervåg takes part in the performance - serving a bacalao dish to the audience.

The theatregroup display was established in Bergen in 1999 and has done several art and performance projects both in theater venues and galleries. Members of display are Marius E. Hauge og Marie Nerland. http://www.bek.no/display

Alexander Gerner started writing text for theatre and as a director in 1997 with his piece Trance. In 1998 he won the dance/theatre price in Munich for the internet- live performance Zap through my life. He lives and works as a video and performance artist in Lisbon and has directed and taken part in projects at Kampnagel Hamburg, Moussonturm Frankfurt, Neues Theater/ I-camp München and the International Theaterfestival SPIELART 99 where he showed his piece CUT. His two latest projects 10 basic things and Tragedy 0:1 was shown in Lisbon.

Håvard Pedersen aka fokuda has made the music in the performance. He has earlier as a member of the electronica trio male:female created music to two of displays earlier projects Lost highlights og 24 songs.

Roy Lervåg, chef and performance artist based in Bergen.

Fiel Amigo - A Friend That Can Be Trusted was first shown at the Galery 3.14 in Bergen (Norway) on April 23rd and 24th, 2003. The performance was presented later in Lisbon on July 16th and 17th 2003, and at the JUNGE HUNDE festival Mladi Levi at Bunker in Ljubljana, august 26th and 27th the same year. It was also presented at the festival BASTARD at Teaterhuset Avantgarden in Trondheim, March 28th, 2004.

Fiel Amigo is co- produced by BEK, Bergen Centre for Electronic Art and supported by Arts Council Norway, City of Bergen and UD.

24 Songs

2002 - InPerformances

DISPLAY + MALE:FEMALE + MEINUNGSBILDUNGSINSTITUT

Landmark, Bergen Kunsthall
24 April 2002

The project was a collaboration with the performance group meinungsbildungsinstitut (Germany) which was established in 2001 by Christina Hänsel and Andre Eiermann from Giessen and the band male:female which consists of Jan Christian Thommesen, Sindre Holme and Håvard Pedersen.
The performance was based on live music, video, text and actions. The texts existed of 24 songs based on a 2002 version of the Odyssee and the theme of travelling. The performance maintained a complicated structure, where each song was connected to changes in video, sound and light. The performance was webcast live over the internet on Landmarks' website. Webcameras were used as an integral part of the performance and we sent postcards to the webcamera through a pulley system.

The project was co-prodused by BEK, Bergen Centre for Electronic Art and financially supported by City of Bergen.

Lost highlights

2001 - InPerformances

LOST HIGHLIGHTS

DISPLAY + MALE:FEMALE

Meteorfestivalen
BIT Teatergarasjen
2 - 3 October 2001

Lost highlights was a performance based on both edited, non-edited performance material and ideas for performances. Action, texts and videomaterial was mixed with live electronic music by male:female. The performance took place in a closed down store at Nøstet in Bergen. The project was a part of the theatrefestival Meteor, BIT Teatergarasjen and part of the opening arrangement of the festival of contemporary art, Bergart.
The performance was co-produced by BIT Teatergarasjen and BEK, Bergen Center for Elektronic Art. The project was financially supported by City of Bergen.